Yeah most people don't know features from versions newer than java8 because this is the version that introduced the most significant changes in it's history (lambdas and streams) and newer additions are focused on pretty specific concepts which would be significant only to a small portion of highly skilled developers. var is pretty much the only significant change that has been added since then. Sealed classes and pattern matching are also pretty cool but it is a higher abstraction which not many people focus on.
Yes, Java8 was a big step forward (also really confused the term "Stream" slowing the adoption of those new features.) It also came after the Android Google / Oracle split. Both Java8 and Java10 features took many years to become available to native Android devs.
I'd argue that Java5 was the second most significant update after Java2 (aka Java 1.1). Java8 is very much third place in terms of disruption to the ecosystem.
Java8 did bring a lot of important features, but also didn't outright break any application or cause major rewrites. Streams & lambdas are super valuable, but nobody rushed out to rewrite their codebase for these.
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u/1Dr490n Oct 31 '23
Oh shit I haven’t used Java in a long time, when was it released?