Oracle’s shift from doing a major release of standard Java every three years to doing releases every six months, a plan announced in September 2017, has resulted in versions with far fewer new capabilities than before. And that are perhaps far less interesting.
Java Development Kit (JDK) 13, due in September, has just five new features, including a preview of text blocks and an enhancement to the Z garbage collector. Now in a rampdown phase in its development, JDK 13 follows JDK 12, released in March. JDK 12 had eight new features, including a preview of switch expressions.
