Java Annotated Monthly — December 2018

Happy winter/summer solstice and any associated festivals and holidays you may or may not celebrate! This month's annotated contains a mix of news and talks from various autumn conferences and some light reading to tide you over until the new year.

Java News

A lot of the news in this section came from Devoxx, Belgium, which seems to be the place to announce things after Oracle Code One, or re-iterate messages from that conference. All the talks from Devoxx were streamed and recorded, see the Tweet below for more details on just some of the presentations.

• Java Magazine: Understanding Oracle JDK Releases in Transition — this provides a good overview of the license changes in Java 11, and the differences between the Oracle JDK and OpenJDK (by Oracle).
• Java Magazine: What’s new in JDK 11
• Java in 2018: Change is the Only Constant by Mark Reinhold (video) — I saw this live at Devoxx; it’s a good overview of the state of Java right now.
• Java Futures, Devoxx 2018 Edition BY Brian Goetz (video) — I haven’t had a chance to watch this talk fully yet, but I want to — it covers some of the features we can look forward to in future releases of Java.
• Amazon Release Corretto: A Multiplatform Java OpenJDK Build with No-Cost Support — announced at Devoxx, another option if you like your JDKs free.
• Next: Streamlining the JCP Program — the Java Community Process continues to evolve, which is particularly important with the faster release cadence of Java and with Java EE becoming Jakarta EE

[1 of 12] Thread
2018 #Devoxx BE sessions by the @Oracle Java Platform Team are available for replay. Which are your favorites? @Java Together#OpenJDK#JDK#Java

- Sharat (@Sharat_Chander) November 20, 2018

Java Tutorials and Tips

This month's tips and tutorials are a mix of classic Java, up-and-coming-not-released-yet Java, and new-ish stuff you should probably be using soon. For daily tips during December (up until Christmas), see the annual Java Advent Calendar.

Another year, another Java advent calendar https://t.co/pxPuwUDviupic.twitter.com/IUGrNonqBT
- Java Advent Calendar (@JavaAdvent) December 1, 2018

• Amazon Corretto: Another OpenJDK — This provides steps on how to get started 
• Java Magazine: Value Types Are Coming to the JVM — What are value types and why should we care?
• Game of Life Lessons: Static Smells — This suggests that static methods are a smell. While they are in the context of this article, it’s worth remembering that in the new functional-friendly post-Java-8 world static methods have their own place
• How to Use Java HashMap Effectively — The introductory stuff is too basic for most of you, but the info about some of the methods added in Java 8 is useful to know
• Var with Style: Local Variable Type Inference in Java 10 — There’s a lot of confusion about when to use var and what it’s good for. Stuart Marks is a good person to help clear up these questions.
• JUnit5 Assertion Migration Strategy — I really liked this practical article on how to move from JUnit 4 to JUnit 5. Also, don’t forget that IntelliJ IDEA can help you migrate from JUnit 4 to 5.
• Comprehensive Step-By-Step Guide on How to Upload Open-Source Java Library to Maven Central — If you’ve never developed a library used by others, you probably won’t realize that this can be a non-trivial task.
• How to handle checked exception in lambda expression- Part 1 — these checked exceptions are a bit nasty in lambda expressions — here’s one way to deal with that.
• 26 Reasons Why Using Optional Correctly Is Not Optional — some tips on how to use Optional, which are useful for seeing some of the newer methods introduced since Java 8
• How to Solve Your Java Performance Problems (Part 1) — Or: having a methodical approach is more likely to lead to success than stabbing wildly in the dark
• Shortest Code and Lowest Latency — Here is another interesting read if performance is your thing!
• Give Me a break, or: How to Make Awesome Puzzlers with Java 12 — Switch expressions are a preview feature in Java 12; get a heads-up on what they look like now!

Languages, Frameworks and Libraries

Micro is all the rage these days.

• Is Boilerplate Code Really So Bad? — My talk from Oracle Code One, an overview of Kotlin plus some of the newer features in Java.
• Finding Symmetry — This provides an overview of the API of Eclipse collections, a useful and fast set of collections for the JVM
• MicroProfile, the microservice programming model made for Istio — This is the tutorial for using MicroProfile with Istio (ooh look, cloud and microservices together, buzzword bingo).
• Micronaut Tutorial: How to Build Microservices with this JVM-based Framework — If it's got "micro" in the title, it's probably Important To Learn.
• Micronaut Tutorial: Part 2: Easy Distributed Tracing, JWT Security and AWS Lambda Deployment
• Serverless, Java and FN Project, first steps — Check out this tutorial for getting started with FN Project — something I keep telling myself I'll look into one day.

Culture and Community

Other interesting articles that aren't specifically Java-related.

• We Propose the Emerging Technology Analysis Canvas (ETAC) — In other words, let’s have a consistent way to evaluate technology before we jump in and use it.
• Yak shaving and fixing — Or: if you enjoy it, it’s a Good Thing to take the time to fix stuff that annoys you.
• Why giving back is important to the DevOps culture — Remember: DevOps is not just a list of tools, but a culture
• Eclipse Foundation Survey 2018 — You can complete this to give the Eclipse foundation a view into how you and your organization see open source.

And Finally

Here's a chance to catch up on the IntelliJ IDEA and other JetBrains news that you might have missed:

• IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 and 2018.3.1 were released!
• Take a look at our What’s New in IntelliJ IDEA screencasts.

If you have any interesting or useful Java /JVM news to share via Java Annotated Monthly, leave a comment or drop me a message via Twitter.