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What's New in Java 21

by Sander Mak

This course provides an overview of the most important features in Java 21. It will teach you what APIs have changed, and it covers the introduction of pattern matching in switch, record patterns, and virtual shreads.

What you'll learn

Java is still steadily delivering on its promise to release twice every year. Java 21 was the second release in 2023 and is designated as a long-term supported release version by many JDK vendors. In this course, What's New in Java 21, you'll get an overview of the most important features in Java 21 and learn to apply those features in your own codebase. First, you’ll explore changes to the core Java APIs. Next, you’ll discover how pattern matching in switch works; combined with record patterns, this makes for a powerful new way of writing Java code. Finally, Java 21 brings virtual threads: a new way of writing concurrent code without the drawbacks of existing threads or competing asynchronous approaches. When you’re finished with this course, you will be able to use these features in your own applications.

About the author

Sander is Director of Technology at Picnic —the Dutch online grocery scale-up— building Java-based systems at scale. He also is a Java Champion and author of the O'Reilly book 'Java 9 Modularity' (see javamodularity.com). As an avid conference speaker, Sander loves sharing knowledge, also through his blog at http://branchandbound.net and as Pluralsight instructor.

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