Software development is a dynamic process, especially in the early stages of a project or when experimenting with new ideas. During these phases, files and overall structures can change frequently. Java, traditionally known for its strict organizational requirements, has made impressive strides to accommodate this fluidity and become more beginner-friendly.

The Stream API provides a rich and versatile set of intermediate operations, even though certain ops are still missing or are hard to implement with the given ones. Whereas terminal ops are quite customizable by writing our own Collector, an equivalent wasn’t available until now as a preview: Stream Gatherers.

The Foreign Function & Memory API, part of Project Pananama, improves Java’s interoperability with code and data outside the JVM. Calling native libraries and working with native memory becomes safer and more straightforward than using the fragile and often dangerous JNI.

Class files and the underlying Bytecode serve as the universal language within the Java ecosystem. Parsing, generating, and transforming class files are essential tasks enabling many of the tools and libraries we use daily.

In this article, I want to talk about a non-preview feature belonging to Project Amber, JEP 456. With Java 9, the _ (underscore) became a reserved keyword and no longer a valid identifier. Now, with the release of Java 22, the new keyword finally gets a specific meaning: something not having a name.

The first (preview) feature of Java 22 I want to talk about is one I’m quite excited about! JEP 447 introduces a significant change by relaxing the strict rules for constructors. It finally allows (certain) statements to be executed before calling the super(...) call.