What's New in Java (Live): Concurrency

Java’s concurrency model has undergone one of its most significant transformations in decades. This session introduces the core features behind that shift, enabling the development of highly concurrent applications with a simpler, more intuitive programming style.

We will explore Virtual Threads, Structured Concurrency, and Scoped Values. Together, these features allow developers to write code that looks sequential while scaling to handle large numbers of concurrent tasks, with improved clarity, safety, and maintainability.

This session focuses on the modern concurrency features introduced as part of Project Loom. These features change how developers approach parallelism and coordination in Java applications.

We begin with Virtual Threads, which provide lightweight threads managed by the JVM. They allow applications to scale to a large number of concurrent operations without the complexity of thread pools or reactive frameworks. Developers can write straightforward blocking code while still achieving high throughput.

Next, we examine Structured Concurrency, which introduces a way to organize concurrent tasks as a single unit of work. This approach simplifies error handling, cancellation, and lifecycle management by ensuring that related tasks are started and completed together.

We then explore Scoped Values, a safer alternative to ThreadLocal. Scoped Values allow data to be shared across a well-defined execution boundary, making context propagation more predictable and easier to reason about in concurrent programs.

By the end of the session, attendees will understand how these features work together to simplify concurrent programming in Java. They will gain a clear mental model for writing scalable applications using a style that is both readable and robust.

About Daniel Hinojosa

Daniel is a programmer, consultant, instructor, speaker, and recent author. With over 20 years of experience, he does work for private, educational, and government institutions. He is also currently a speaker for No Fluff Just Stuff tour. Daniel loves JVM languages like Java, Groovy, and Scala; but also dabbles with non JVM languages like Haskell, Ruby, Python, LISP, C, C++. He is an avid Pomodoro Technique Practitioner and makes every attempt to learn a new programming language every year. For downtime, he enjoys reading, swimming, Legos, football, and barbecuing.

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