> And the movement from Java 8 to Java 11 was slowed by bytecode changes and the advent of modules, which declared which of their internals you could dick with.

> And the movement from Java 8 to Java 11 was slowed by bytecode changes and the advent of modules, which declared which of their internals you could dick with. Sure, you could add --add-opens to your commands, but it felt (as intended), hacky as all hell. While modules were added in 9, as you mention, strong encapsulation was only turned on in JDK 16; until then, visibility was identical to 8, and no flags were neededl. Modules were not the reason for the difficulties in migration from 8 to 9+. By far, the main reason was libraries that depended on JDK, not subject to backward compatibility, that were changed. Such libraries were non-portable by design. Strong encapsulation (in effect only since JDK 16) is intended to prevent that. You only need to --add-opens when you bypass the specification, and when you do, you know that your code is not portable. add-opens is hacky because it is needed to enable hackiness; a codebase that isn't hacky doesn't need it. So now that strong encapsulation is in effect, modules will actually prevent those kinds of difficulties.