Having been away (again) from Java, I never knew or appreciated what had changed or how it had improved. At work they were happy with Java 6 and saw no reason to upgrade. They were not interested in new Java 7 features but I learned that they have upgraded to Java 8. I've been getting back into Java and boy have I missed a lot: Java 8 functional features are awesome Streams seem amazing as do lambdas new Java libraries A new edition of Effective Java Many new excellent Java books Java 8 in Action Core Java for the impatient Java by comparison new Garbage Collectors Not 1 or 2 but many new Java releases GraalVM And so much more. dzone: A guide to Java versions and features A busy developers guide to Java 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and above I'm really excited about the future of the JVM, Java language and Java ecosystem.