Explore what Java 16 has to offer.

How time flies! Even in these extraordinary times, it seems hard to believe another six months have passed, and we now have a new release of the JDK. As usual, I will summarise all the new features with some commentary on their potential impact on Java application development.

Not all releases are created equal and, depending on how feature development phases align; some will have more features than others. JDK 16 contains quite a few new things, although several of them are continuations or finalization of incubator modules or preview features from earlier releases. I think this is one of the biggest benefits of the faster release cadence. Providing new functionality without making it part of the standard, gathering feedback from developers, and potentially making changes has delivered an improved process for the JDK development.

I’ll take my usual approach of dividing the post into language changes, library additions, JVM-related updates and, finally, anything else.

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