Java Versions or JDK Versions
What is Java Version?
Java is not developed by a single man, but developed by a team of engineers belonging to the corporate giant Sun Microsystems. The development never ends; it goes on. The engineers at Sun Microsystems watch the market demands everyday and adds more classes to the existing to support the present day software requirements. The result is versions. Java started its life in the year 1995 with few hundreds of classes. In 2006, JDK 1.6 was released with few thousands of classes. Every version adds something new which makes programming easy and proves Java is a production language.
A brief table is given on the new features introduced with each Java version.
| Java Version | Main features |
|---|---|
| JDK 1.4 | Assertions, Regular Expressions with package java.util.regex, String class added with new method split(), Exception chaining or exception wrapping etc. |
| JDK 1.5 | Autoboxing, Generics, Enhanced for loop, Varargs, Enums, Static imports, C-lang printf(), StringBuilder, Metadata |
| JDK 1.6 | The package java.awt is reinforced with more classes useful to integrate GUI applications with other GUI technologies, More support for Internationalization, Improvements in Swing package javax.swing, System tray capability is introduced to add icons and tooltips, new type of compiler introduced, Debugger architecture of Java platform is changed, new options in memory leaks and security support added etc. |
| JDK 1.7 | String in Switch Expression, Underscores Between Digits in Numeric Literals, Integral Types as Binary Literals, Handling multiple exceptions in a single catch block, Try-with-resources Statement, Automatic Type Inference in Generic object instantiation etc. |
| JDK 1.8 | Method References, Parallel Sort, Addition of Calendar.Builder, Introduction of Functional Interfaces, Lambda Introduction, Replacement of PremGen with Metaspace etc. |
Major Java version releases with programs, screenshots given in the following links starting from JDK 1.4 to latestJDK 1.8 in four levels.
In the above links many features of different Java versions include like Lambda Function, Try with Resources etc. which are noteworthy to know.
