Every six months ORACLE launches new version of Java, the most common coding language and application platform in the world. Java 14 was released on march 17. Some of the new features and improvements in Java14 are listed below:

• Switch Expressions (Standard)
• Pattern Matching for instanceof (Preview)
• Helpful NullPointerExceptions
• Records (Preview)
• Text Blocks (Second Preview)
• Packaging Tool (Incubator)
• NUMA-Aware Memory Allocation for G1
• JFR Event Streaming
• Non-Volatile Mapped Byte Buffers
• ZGC on macOS
• ZGC on Windows
• Foreign-Memory Access API (Incubator)

Here, we are going to discuss about the features for developers and how new features help us in easy coding.

1. Switch Expressions : Which has been first introduced in Java 12 and Java 13 as a preview and then it is finalized in Java 14. The lambda expression was introduced in Java 12 for switch expressions thereby allowing the multiple case labels for pattern matching. It’s preventing fall-through which lead to verbose code. And it also includes exhaustiveness, and ease of writing.
2. Pattern matching for instanceof : Here instanceof operator has type test pattern. It consist of a predicate that specifies a type and a single binding variable.
3. Helpful NullPointerExceptions : In the previous Version, Developers had to fall onto other debugging tools or manually figure the variable/method that was null, since the stack trace would only show the line number. But in Java 14 it provides more-informative diagnostics.
4. Records : This type is a preview feature of Java 14 and it used as plain immutable data classes and applications. It used in the place where a class is created only for the data carrier purpose. Record differ from normal class, In record Java compiler generate the constructor, field getters, hascode(), and equals() as well as toString() method.
5. Text Blocks : Which is introduced as a preview feature in Java 13. The goal is to allow easy creation of multiline string literals. Using text block we can easily create HTML and JSON or SQL query strings. Text block can use anywhere a string literal can be used. The type of text block is Java. Lang. String and it includes Object representation and interning into the String pool.

Java 14 brings a lot of innovations. It includes new preview language features and updates that help developers to code more easily. Kickstart a successful career as a Java developers from STEPS Kochi, the best IT training institute in Kochi.

Author: STEPS