Java 21 is an explosive release!

The fuse was lit by projects Loom and Amber and 21 blows it up by finalizing virtual threads and all basic building blocks of pattern matching, thus bringing simple scalability to the platform and modern constructs to the language.

But it doesn't stop there: better APIs, better garbage collection, better tooling - particularly when you're coming from 17, the improvements will be ubiquitous.

And beyond all that, Java 21 is fizzling with future:

• There are previews on string templates
• a simplified `main`
• pattern matching refinements
• improved concurrency with virtual threads

Not least, many vendors offer long-term support for their JDK 21 builds, so if you're on 17 or 11 (or 8?), this is the next version to upgrade to.

In this talk, we'll go over all that, so you can hit the ground running when updating to Java 21

Disclaimer: It will be a blast! 💥

Recorded at Devoxx Belgium 2023