Java 11-The Current LTS release
Java releases have a special kind of procedure. It releases small and manageable versions every six month. This helps in adopting small features frequently and does not miss out anything that a Java developer would need. Such a pattern goes well today where technology is ever changing. It allows JDK development to work in agile methodologies and makes Java more competitive with runtimes like NodeJS and Python.
The six month releases are followed by a LTS release. Java 11 is the latest Long Term Support release and is updated with many extraordinary features. It is the first long-term support (LTS) release after Java 8 and the next will be Java 17 which is planned to release in Dec 2021.
Why Java 11 for your project?
Java withdrew its support from Java 8 version leading to the adoption of java 11 by most of the businesses. As it is the latest version, no doubt it is much better and owns many effective features. Java 10 was the last free Oracle JDK and now for using Java 11 you will have to buy a license. Although, it is paid but it offers valuable development environment and secure features.
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Let’s have a look, what’s new in Java 11:
1. Single command for running a Java file
The biggest development that you can see in Java 11 is that you will not have to compile the java source file with javac tool first. Developers can easily run the file with java command as it compiles the code implicitly. This feature comes under JEP 330.
2. New Java String methods
New Java string methods introduced in version 11 are:
isBlank() — isBlank() is an instance method that returns a boolean value. Strings without any value or with white spaces are known to be blank.
lines()
lines() method returns a stream of strings. A stream of strings is a collection of all substrings divided by lines.
strip() — strip() diminishes the white space from the beginning and the end of a string.
repeat(int)
The repeat method simply repeats the string that many numbers of times as mentioned in the method in the form of an int.
3. Local-Variable Syntax for Lambda Parameters
JEP 323 is the Local-Variable Syntax for Lambda Parameters and it is the only language feature released in Java 11.
Local variable syntax permits var to be used to declare the formal parameters of a lambda expression.
For example the syntax used in Java 11 is:
(var s1, var s2) -> s1 + s2
4. Dynamic Class-File Constants
The Java class-file format now supports a new constant pool form in Java 11. This form is CONSTANT_Dynamic. These Dynamic class file constants are used to reduce the cost and disruption of developing new forms of class-file constraints.
5. JEP 318: Epsilon: A No-Op Garbage Collector
Epsilon only allocates memory unlike the JVM GC. It allocates memory for the following things:
• Performance testing.
• Memory pressure testing.
• VM interface testing.
• Extremely short lived jobs.
• Last-drop latency improvements.
• Last-drop throughput improvements.
Now Epsilon is good only for test environments. As it is only in the testing stage. The advantage of this feature is no memory clearance overhead. Hence it’ll give an accurate test result of performance and we can no longer GC for stopping it.
6. Flight Recorder
Flight Recorder is another feature which earlier used to be a commercial supplement in Oracle JDK. Now it is open-source. The flight recorder is a profiling tool used to collect data from a running Java application.
it is generally used in production applications.
7.HTTP Client
The HTTP Client API is standardized in Java 11. The new API supports both HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2. The entire API is designed to improve the end to end performance of sending requests and receiving responses. This feature also supports WebSockets.
Conclusion
There are many other short and quick releases such as Java 12 to 16 and they have come with their own new features. But we are discussing Java 11 because it is the latest LTS release, launched in 2018. These features here have eased programming a lot and the next LTS release is awaited soon. If you deal in Java Software development then you can hire Java software development company in USA.
