Features In Java 8

Java 8 is packed full of some really exciting features at both the JVM and language level. While some of the features initially envisioned for this release got scoped out or pushed out to release 9, there are literally dozens of new features. Many of the new additions are under-the-hood improvements either at the compiler, JVM or help-system level. As such, while we may benefit from them, there’s nothing we need to actively do (other than install Java 8 of course) to enjoy them. Having said that, let’s look at 5 features that we feel are an absolute must for you to know about: 1.Lambda expressions Even if we really didn’t want to go mainstream here, there’s little doubt that from a developer’s perspective, the most dominant feature of Java 8 is the new support for Lambda expressions. This addition to the language brings Java to the forefront of functional programming, right there with other functional JVM-based languages such as Scala and Clojure. We’ve previously looked into how Java implemented Lambda expressions, and how it compared to the approach taken by Scala. From Java’s perspective this is by far one of the biggest additions to the language in the past decade. At minimum, it’s recommended you become familiar with the Lambda syntax, especially as it relates to array and collection operations, where Lambdas have been tightly integrated into the core language libraries. It is highly likely that you’ll start seeing more and more code like the snippet below in both 3rd party and within your organization’s code. ? 1 2 Map> byGender = roster.stream().col lect(Collectors.groupingBy(Person::getGender)); * A pretty efficient way of grouping a collection by the value of a specific class field. 2.Parallel operations With the addition of Lambda expressions to arrays operations, Java introduced a key concept into the language of internal iteration. Essentially as developers we’re used to use loop operations as one of the most basic programming idioms, right up there with if and else. The introduction of Lambda expressions turned that paradigm around, with the actual iteration over a collection on which a Lambda function is applied now carried out by the core library itself (i.e. internal iteration). You can think of this as an extension of iterators where the actual operation of extracting the next item from a collection on which to operate is carried out by an iterator. An exciting possibility opened by this design pattern is to enable operations carried out on long arrays such as sorting, filtering and mapping to be carried out in parallel by the framework. When dealing with server code that’s processing lengthy collections on a continuous basis, this can lead to major throughput improvements with relatively little work from your end. Here’s the same snippet as above, but using the framework’snew parallel processing capabilities - ? 1 2 3 4 ConcurrentMap> byGender = roster.parallelStre am().collect( Collectors.groupin gByConcurrent(Person::getGender)); * It’s a fairly small change that’s required to make this algorithm run on multiple threads. 3.Java + JavaScript = ❤ Java 8 is looking to right one of its biggest historical wrongs – the ever growing distance between Java and JavaScript, one that has only increased in the past few years. With this new release, Java 8 is introducing a completely new JVM JavaScript engine – Nashorn. This engine makes unique use of some of the new features introduced in Java 7such as invokeDynamic to provide JVM-level speed to JavaScript execution right there with the likes of V8 and SpiderMonkey. Check out other new features and learn goo.gl/G2CMCI

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