What's New in Java (Live): Tools, Gatherers and Constants

Java is evolving rapidly, not just in performance and scalability, but in how enjoyable it is to write. In this session, we explore recent language and platform features designed to reduce friction, improve expressiveness, and help developers focus on solving problems instead of wrestling with boilerplate.

We’ll cover tools and features such as the Java Almanac and Playground for exploration, Stream Gatherers for building powerful data pipelines, Module Import Declarations to simplify modular development, and Lazy Constants for safer and more efficient initialization. Together, these changes signal a clear direction: Java is becoming more concise, more flexible, and more developer-friendly than ever before.

This session highlights a set of recent Java features that improve everyday development. The focus is on reducing ceremony, improving readability, and enabling more expressive code while staying within familiar Java patterns.

We begin with the Java Almanac and Java Playground, which provide ways to explore the language and quickly experiment with its features. These tools help developers learn, prototype, and validate ideas with less setup.

Next, we cover Stream Gatherers, an enhancement to the Streams API that allows developers to create custom intermediate operations. This makes it easier to express patterns like grouping, batching, and windowing directly within a stream pipeline.

We then explore Module Import Declarations, which simplify working with the Java Module System by reducing verbosity and making dependencies easier to manage. This lowers the barrier to adopting modules in real applications.

Finally, we look at Lazy Constants, which provide a safer and more flexible approach to initializing values only when needed. This improves performance characteristics while maintaining clarity and correctness.

By the end of the session, attendees will understand how these features contribute to a more streamlined Java experience and how they can apply them to write cleaner and more maintainable code

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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