Java 8 (LTS)

Java 8 was released 2014-03-18. Support from Oracle will end "not earlier than" January 2019.

Resources

Notable New Features

  • Lambda expressions.

  • Method references.

  • static and default methods in interfaces.

  • Streams.

  • Optional (replacing Guava functionality) 

  • Nashorn

  • New date and time API (replacing Joda-Time functionality)

  • Base64

  • Functional programming interfaces (replacing Guava functionality)

Lambda expressions are foundational for both the Stream and functional programming features.

Nashorn is compatible with ECMAScript 5.1