From Idea to IDE - How Java Features Are Considered, Designed, And Shipped

How a community of Java enthusiasts drives innovation for 15 years, turning ideas into designs into code into features you can use in your IDE

Five sea gulls flying across a blue sky, tinged golden by the setting sun, above a blue sea with waves crashing into the sand in the foreground

OpenJDK is one of the world's most influential open source communities. It drives the reference implementation of Java SE and the Java Virtual Machine, a programming language and runtime environment used daily by millions of software developers. More than that, the community drives its innovation - 15 years and counting of new language features, core library additions, performance improvements, runtime enhancements, and new tooling.

But how does it all work? How does a community of Java enthusiasts, often financed by some of the biggest tech companies yet working with self-determination, turn ideas into designs into code into features you can use in your IDE? Well, let me explain (in this talk).

Slides

Here's the current version of the slides.

I also embedded them below. If they're focussed, you can navigate with arrow keys or swipes (they're two-dimensional, with chapters on the horizontal axis and chapter content layed out vertically). Use Page Up/Down for linearized order and ? for more shortcuts.

Video

Here's a good recording of the talk. I hope you'll like it.

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Watch on YouTube

Past Presentations

I gave this talk a few times before. See below for links to slides (as they were at that very event), videos, and other information.

2023