What's Cool in Java 8, and New in Java 9
Which features in Java 8 and 9 should you look at first? Aurelio Garcia-Ribeyro, director of product management on the Java platform explains the most popular features of Java 8 and 9
Java 9 has over 90 Java enhancement proposals (JEPs)]. To help you navigate those JEPs, Aurelio classified the JEPs in 5 categories, which are: behind the scenes, new functionality, new standards, housekeeping and gone. In this presentation, he describes some of the most important JEPs in each category.
Behind the scenes: functionalities that you get as default in JDK 9. They will be compatible with your current code and tools and you will get better performance
250: Store Interned Strings in CDS Archives
254: Compact Strings
225: Javadoc Search
New functionality: new capabilities that you have to change your code or use new tools to get.
Project Jigsaw: Module system for the Java platform
282: jlink, the Java Linker
277: Enhanced deprecation
269: Convenience Factory Methods for Collections
222: Shell, a read-eval-print loop (REPL)
238: Multi-release JAR Files
New standards: JDK 9 will take advantage of new standards in the industry.
267: Unicode 8.0
226: UTF-8 Property resource bundles
249: OCSP Stapling for TLS
287: SHA-3 Hash algorithms
110: HTTP 2/Client
Housekeeping: improvements to existing libraries, changes in internal code, work for future improvements.
260: Encapsulate most internal APIs
275: Modular Java application packaging
223: New version-string scheme
295: Ahead of time compilation
280: Indify string concatenation
271: Unified GC Logging
248: Make G1 the default Garbage Collector
213: Milling Project Coin
290: Filter incoming serialization data
214: Remove GC combinations
You can test any of those functionalities by trying the JDK 9 early access The full list of JEPs is available as part of the OpenJDK JDK 9
For JDK 8, Aurelio gives an example demonstrating how to use lambdas in Java 8 and pass not just data but behavior. He also explains the default and reference methods. For example, when you define a collection interface you can pass a default method. This will ensure compatibility with code written for older versions of your interfaces and add new functionality to your interfaces.
Chapters for Java 8 features
Lambda Expressions - 2m29s
Default Methods and Method References - 10m04s
Date and Time API - JSR 310
More information about module system and JDK 9 can be found online:
JEP 261: Module System
JEP 200: The Modular JDK
JDK 9 release
Release notes
Java 9 expert insights
JDK 9 documentation
Migration guide
Java SE & JDK 9 API Specification
Oracle JDK 9 and JRE 9 Certified System Configurations
Related blog: Modular Development with JDK 9
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