Grasping Java 8: open source Java 8 workshop
Although Java has always been awesome, Java 8 has brought the language several features the language was in dire need of. Apart from the long-awaited improved DateTime-API and the introduction of Optionals, Java 8 finally gave behaviour the attention it deserves by incorporating (a form of) functional programming into the language using lambdas.
The opportunities that Java 8 brought the language and the platform have long since been taken and functional styles of programming are part of our day-to-day routines as Java Developers. For-loops are a thing of the past for most of us, and although it had quite the learning curve, passing streams around and chaining operations on them to create some very readable code is common sense for us now.
Even though Java 8 has been around for quite some time now, you might have been working in an environment that was still bound to previous versions of the language. If so, then you’re probably still at the start of the already mentioned learning curve that’s needed to truly grasp all that Java 8 has brought us.
For those of you that could use some help with understanding Java 8, we’ve created a koans-like workshop that’s available on our github page. We’ve used this workshop in our Fast Track and noticed that it really helps developers get along with Java 8, and that the workshop was something to be shared with the community. So here goes 🙂
Have fun! And if you might have any questions, you can reach me on twitter at @cvdsteeg
