Preface
Like any of the most-used programming languages, Java has its share of detractors, advocates, issues, quirks,1 and a learning curve. The Java Cookbook aims to help the Java developer get up to speed on some of the most important parts of Java development. I focus on the standard APIs and some third-party APIs, but I don’t hesitate to cover language issues as well.
This is the fourth edition of this book, and it has been shaped by many people and by the myriad changes that Java has undergone over its first two decades of popularity. Readers interested in Java’s history can refer to Appendix A.
Java 11 is the current long-term supported version, but Java 12 and 13 are out. Java 14 is in early access and scheduled for final release the very same day as this book’s fourth edition. The new cadence of releases every six months may be great for the Java SE development team at Oracle and for click-driven, Java-related news sites, but it “may cause some extra work” for Java book authors, since books typically have a longer revision cycle than Java now does! Java 9, which came out after the previous edition of this book, was a breaking release, the first release in a very long time to break backwards compatibility, primarily the Java module system. Everything in the book is assumed to work on any JVM that is still being used to develop code. Nobody should be using Java 7 (or anything before it!) for anything, and nobody should be doing new development in Java 8. If you are, it’s ...
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