Weekly Links: October 15, 2020

Java

Guide to Text Blocks in Java 15

If you want to know all about the only new user-facing feature in Java 15,

1
2
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then """you have
     come to the
     right place!"""

And for better or for worse, the guide looks like a web page that’s as old as Java…

Kotlin

Kotlin’s 6-Month Roadmap

Kotlin is the most popular JVM language that Oracle can’t sue Google for. That makes it the second-most popular language on the JVM! And they just published their roadmap until March 2021: Compiler and IDE will get faster, and Kotlin will improve on servers and mobile platforms.

JVM

Amazon Releases Garbage Collector Benchmark

Well, somebody had fun at Amazon: The benchmark’s name is “Heapothesys”. Get it? Java systems allocate objects on the heap. That’s why it isn’t called “hypothesis”! This is Amazon, so the name isn’t half-bad. They could have called it “AlexArbage” or “GarbagEcho”…

Anyhow, there are many Java versions and distributions and garbage collectors and garbage collector versions. If you want to research who takes out the garbage in your Java application, this open-source benchmark can help you!

Interview With Shenandoah Garbage Collector Team

Talking about garbage collectors: This one was added to JDK 11 during the JDK maintenance. It’s called “Shenandoah” and was developed by a Red Hat team. In the interview, they answer many questions. But not the most important one: Where the heck does this name come from? Sound like a new smoothie at Whole Foods…

Episode 54 of the Java podcast “OffHeap” discussed whether a new feature, like a garbage collector, should be added to an LTS version of Java at all. Isn’t an LTS version just to get bug fixes and security patches? And now all Java distributions have to support Shenandoah. Red Hat could have just added it to its own OpenJDK distribution instead.

Releases

Spring Security

Spring Security released versions 5.4.1, 5.3.5, 5.2.7, 5.1.13, 5.0.19, and 4.2.19. They take ongoing support seriously - that’s the current version plus five previous ones. Are they staffed with Ex-Microsofties?!