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> This is one of the reasons why it takes so long for projects to migrate from Java 8 to Java 9 and beyond. EDIT: Oh, just realized... it's probably a misunder

> This is one of the reasons why it takes so long for projects to migrate from Java 8 to Java 9 and beyond. EDIT: Oh, just realized... it's probably a misunderstanding on my part. "Java 8 to (Java 9 and beyond)" is the intended reading, probably. My bad. ----------- DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS POINT ---------- Maybe it's just a phrasing issue, but... The Java 8 -> Java 9 (or 11, in practice) transition was special in a few ways (modules, mainly), but I don't see why any future transition should be quite as disruptive? Do you have anything concrete in mind, because if you do, I'd like to know about it!

alblue 6y ago
No, it's likely that it won't be quite as disruptive in the future. There were a few backward incompatible changes with modularisation (in order to break module cycles) but the bigger disruptive changes were moves away from sun.misc.* packages which should never have been used by production code (but which often were, because speed). Fortunately Java took a middle-of-the-road approach; it didn't quite get rid of as many things as it could (Unsafe stayed around in a few ways). Had it all been killed off then the transition would have been more problematic. With Java 17 being the next LTS I don't think there's appetite to break things before then but it's quite possible that Java 18 will really put the hammer down and remove Unsafe for good. That, I think, will be one of the last disruptive things Java does.