JDK 14

Is one of the recent releases from Oracle as part of their new six-month release cadence. Here’s an overview of some of the key features and enhancements in JDK 14:

1. JEP 305: Pattern Matching for instanceof (Preview): This feature simplifies the common coding pattern of testing if an expression has a certain type and then conditionally extracting components of its state for further processing.

2. JEP 359: Records (Preview): Records provide a compact syntax for declaring classes that are transparent holders for shallowly immutable data. This can reduce the boilerplate code associated with writing simple data carrier classes.

3. JEP 361: Switch Expressions (Standard): After being a preview feature in earlier versions, Switch Expressions became a standard feature in JDK 14. This provides a more concise and flexible way to handle multiple case labels in switch statements.

4. JEP 368: Text Blocks (Second Preview): Text Blocks simplify the task of writing multiline string literals, preserving indentation and formatting. They were introduced in JDK 13 and enhanced in JDK 14.

5. JEP 370: Foreign-Memory Access API (Incubator): This provides an API to allow Java programs to safely and efficiently access foreign memory outside of the Java heap.

6. JEP 362: Deprecate the Solaris and SPARC Ports: This JDK Enhancement-Proposal marked the Solaris and SPARC ports as deprecated, indicating that they might be removed in a future release.

7. JEP 364: ZGC on macOS: This made the Z Garbage Collector available on macOS.

8. JEP 365: ZGC on Windows: Similarly, this made the Z Garbage Collector available on Windows.

9. JEP 363: Remove the Concurrent Mark Sweep (CMS) Garbage Collector: This proposal was to remove the Cms Garbage Collector, which had been deprecated since JDK 9.

10. JEP 366: Deprecate the ParallelScavenge + SerialOld GC Combination: This deprecated the combination of the Parallel Scavenge young collector and the Serial old collector.

11. Various Performance Improvements and Bug Fixes: As with all releases, JDK 14 included numerous performance improvements, bug fixes, and minor enhancements to make the Java platform more efficient and reliable.

Developers who wanted to explore these new features could download JDK 14 from the Oracle website or other providers. If you were looking to use JDK 14 in a production environment, you’d have to evaluate the specific features you were planning to utilize and test thoroughly to ensure compatibility and stability.