JCON EUROPE 2023

Java has issues! Verbose, cumbersome, no expressiveness, no fun. (Or so the kids say.)

Jokes and the craving for syntax sugar aside, Java does have some persistent pain points and Project Amber was set up to tackle them. Not as a single solution to a narrow problem, but as a solution factory that's steadily and carefully chipping away at them:

* text blocks and interpolation to untie the knots in dealing with strings
* pattern matching, records, and sealed types against the clunkiness of operating on data
* `var`, records, and destructuring to reduce redundancy in variable and type declarations
* a relaxed launch protocol to pave the on-ramp for Java beginners

We'll look at these features individually and how they play together to make Java more expressive, more succinct, and more readable. After this talk, you'll know how Project Amber drove and drives the evolution of the language.