Java 21 has been released in September 2023.
The following content is summarizing the most important changes to the Java API, the Java language, and the JVM introduced with Java 21.
For a more complete overview follow the links in the following sections referring to the official Oracle release documents.
Before we go into details of the enhancements and additions of Java ⑰ lets briefly look at new relic’s yearly State of the Java Ecosystem 2024 report.
Even though Java ⑰ LTS was released in September 2021, in 2023 only ~19% of the projects have been using it. Java ⑧ still had a share of 33%. and Java ⑪ was the dominant release with ~56%.
Before we go into details of the enhancements and additions of Java ⑪ lets briefly look at new relic’s yearly State of the Java Ecosystem 2024 report.
Even though Java ⑪ LTS was released in 2018, in 2020 only ~11% of the projects have been using it. Java ⑧ was still the dominant Java release. In 2023 usage was still at 33% and only dropped to around 28% in 2024.
