Oracle releases Java 13 and things are changing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All jokes of ominous soothsaying and portents aside, Oracle has released Java 13 with a promise of updates every six months. This is kind of a big deal because they are famous for releasing updates every 3 years, up until about 2017…
This article<\/em><\/a> goes into more detail and provides a little historical content too, but let’s focus on a few things; mainly two new features:
Switch Expressions:<\/strong><\/span> This feature “extends switch statements so\u00a0they can be used as a statement or as an expression<\/a>.”*
Text Block:<\/span><\/strong> “The Text Blocks feature<\/a>\u00a0is designed to simplify writing Java programs by easily expressing strings that span several lines of source code without escape sequences.”*
There is the caveat that these are ‘preview features’, which means they may be removed in the future at some point or not, but this coupled with other improvements has given Oracle the image of coming out of the gate swinging.
Which brings us to the big question, should you learn Java in 2019?
“Why not, you can’t lose. If you want to get jobs in the enterprise\/android development, Java is going to be good for a long time. …And if for some reason an asteroid hits the earth and Java starts tanking in terms of popularity, you will have the [nerd] background to be able to move to any language you want.”
This of course referring to the fact that Java is one of those big languages that has inspired so many other languages after it, and as such has many roots (for lack of a better term), in so many other languages that learning those other languages when you have a competent understanding of Java makes it so much easier. “…Java teaches you all these different concepts, best coding practices and so forth, which carries over 102% into any other language.”
The Vlog goes into some more detail and is worth a look. Plus, we’ve teamed up with InMotion hosting for a really amazing offer where they pay for you to take our courses and learn how to become a web developer. Links to all these offers are below<\/span>.
-Enjoy!
*: To quote Liam Tung’s ZDnet article (link above).<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n