advanced~3h
Java 18-20: Maturing Toward Java 21
Three transitional releases that fixed a decades-old default encoding inconsistency and ran the final preview rounds of virtual threads and pattern matching for switch -- the last stretch of groundwork before Java 21 locked everything in as a long-term-support baseline.
Learning objectives
- Explain the UTF-8-by-default change in Java 18 and what cross-platform bug class it eliminates
- Describe what a feature preview round across consecutive releases (19 and 20) signals about its design stability
- Recognize virtual threads and structured concurrency as previewing here, and know where to find their full depth in this platform
- Read the preview syntax for pattern matching for switch as it stood in Java 20, ahead of its Java 21 finalization
- Explain why Oracle chooses to preview a feature across multiple releases instead of finalizing it immediately
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Java 18-20: Maturing Toward Java 21