All Eyes on Java 10

Java 10 release notes (including update releases) can be found here. The Java 10 API specification can be found here.

JDK 8 on the Out

Oracle will stop updating Java 8 commercially from January 2019. All focus now should be on the latest feature release Java 10 (with a nod to new kid on the block, Nashorn, from Java 9 onwards).

Remind me again - what is a REPL environment?

Suppose we are comparing various JavaScript engines for the JVM. One criteria for comparison might be whether they provide a REPL environment for the JVM - basically, an environment where you can type in quick commands to test out the language and interact with Java libraries dynamically.

More formally, REPL can be defined as a Read-Eval-Print loop, with the read function taking in the expression (rather than a full-fledged compilation unit), eval evaluates and print prints the result. JShell is a REPL included in the JDK since Java9.