Oracle has announced the availability of Java 24, the latest version of the world’s number one programming language and development platform. Java 24 (Oracle JDK 24) delivers thousands of improvements to help developers maximize productivity and drive innovation. In addition, enhancements to the platform’s performance, stability, and security help organizations accelerate their business growth.

“As Java approaches its 30th anniversary later this year it continues to expand its toolset to meet developers’ evolving needs, including capabilities that support the development of AI-powered applications,” said Arnal Dayaratna, research vice president, software development, IDC. “The wide range of capabilities in the new release will help increase developers’ productivity, enabling them to deliver feature-rich applications to their organizations and customers faster and more efficiently. The Java 24 release underscores that Java is unparalleled for the development of enterprise-grade, mission-critical applications at scale.”

“Over the past 30 years, Java has provided developers with a comprehensive platform to build and deploy applications that address a diverse range of use cases,” said Georges Saab, senior vice president, Oracle Java Platform and chair, OpenJDK governing board. “With more than 20 new features spanning every element of Java, including new AI and post-quantum crypto capabilities, the Java 24 release gives developers the tools they need to build innovative, AI-infused applications. As the stewards of Java, we’re excited to work with the global Java community to continue delivering a steady stream of new features via our predictable, six-month cadence.”

Language Features

• JEP 488: Primitive Types in Patterns, instanceof, and switch (Second Preview): Helps developers increase Java programming productivity by making the language more uniform and expressive. This feature helps developers enhance pattern matching by removing restrictions pertaining to primitive types that developers encounter when using pattern matching, instanceof, and switch. It also allows primitive type patterns in all pattern contexts and extends instanceof and switch to work with all primitive types. Developers of applications that integrate AI inferencing will especially benefit from support of primitive types.
• JEP 492: Flexible Constructor Bodies (Third Preview): Helps developers improve the reliability of code via the introduction of two distinct prologue and epilogue phases in a constructor body. This enables developers to more naturally place logic that they currently must factor into auxiliary static methods, auxiliary intermediate constructors, or constructor arguments. In addition, it preserves the existing safeguard that code in a subclass constructor cannot interfere with superclass instantiation, resulting in making a class more reliable when methods are overridden.
• JEP 494: Module Import Declarations (Second Preview): Helps developers improve productivity by enabling them to quickly and easily import all the packages exported by a module, without requiring the importing code to be in a module itself. This simplifies the reuse of modular libraries for all developers and helps beginners more easily use third-party libraries and fundamental Java classes without needing to learn where they are located in a package hierarchy. This feature also benefits developers aiming to integrate business logic quickly with native AI inference, library, or service calls.
• JEP 495: Simple Source Files and Instance Main Methods (Fourth Preview): Helps students write their first programs without needing to understand language features designed for large programs by offering a smooth on-ramp to Java programming. As a result, educators and instructors can introduce concepts gradually, and students can write streamlined declarations for single-class programs and seamlessly expand their programs with more advanced features as their skills grow. In addition, experienced Java developers can write small programs succinctly and efficiently without needing to use tools designed for larger projects.

The features in the Java 24 release are a result of continuous collaboration between Oracle and other members of the global Java developer community via OpenJDK and the Java Community Process (JCP).

For more details on the features in Java 24, please read the Java 24 technical blog post.