Oracle today made generally available a Java 21 edition and provided early access to more than 15 proposed enhancements to the Java development kit (JDK).
Those enhancements were announced at an Oracle CloudWorld 2023 conference, including support for virtual threads to improve overall throughput and adding support for a vector application programming interface (API) that makes it simpler to build Java applications that involve artificial intelligence (AI) models.
Georges Saab, senior vice president of Oracle Java Platform and chair of the OpenJDK governing board, said the goal is to streamline access to the latest innovations that will be added to future versions of Java.
Specifically, via Project Amber, JDK 21 delivers improvements such as support for string Templates, record Patterns, pattern Matching for switch, unnamed Patterns and variables and unnamed classes and instance main methods.
In addition to the Vector API, Project Panama adds a Foreign Function & Memory API. Project Loom, in addition to virtual threads, adds scoped values and structured concurrency support.
There is also a more efficient garbage collection mechanism being proposed.
Oracle is committing to offering long-term support for Java 21 for at least eight years to encourage organizations to start working with this version of Java today. Oracle is also making available a Java Playground, an online sandbox on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) service where developers can create Java code using this edition without needing a local runtime or integrated development environment (IDE).
In general, Java has been experiencing a renaissance after more organizations began contributing to projects once the core platform became available under an open source OpenJDK license. In fact, the Java community is now adopting many concepts pioneered in other programming languages. That enables organizations to, for example, drive digital business transformation initiatives that depend on the modernization of legacy applications. As part of those efforts, the rate at which Java applications are being deployed in the cloud has substantially increased.
Despite the number of alternative programming languages, many enterprise IT organizations remain committed to Java. Rather than opting to retrain developers, it’s simply been more cost-effective to enable developers to continue to build applications using a programming language they already know.
Many organizations are currently in the process of shifting to Java 17. It’s not clear how many organizations will skip Java 17 and jump to Java 21 from previous versions of Java, but it’s clear Oracle is committed to making the lag time between moving from previous versions of Java to Java 21 much shorter.
Most organizations will find themselves continuing to deploy Java applications everywhere from the network edge to the cloud. These applications will be written in a programming language that has persevered for more than two decades and continues to evolve and mature for the next era of application development.