April 2018
Intermediate to advanced
910 pages
33h 21m
English
Java 8, released on March 8, 2014, brought arguably two of the most significant features since Java 5, released in 2004--lambdas and streams. With functional programming gaining popularity in the JVM world, especially with the help of languages such as Scala, Java adherents had been clamoring for more functional-style language features for several years. Originally slated for release in Java 7, the feature was dropped from that release, finally seeing a stable release with Java 8.
While it can be hoped that everyone is familiar with Java's lambda support, experience has shown that many shops, for a variety of reasons, are slow to adopt new language versions and features, so a quick introduction might be helpful.