Java's success as one of the most used programming languages in the world comes in no small parts from its approachability. But what may have been an easy entry into programming in the mid 90s, appears laborious today: classes, (static) methods, visibility, parameter definitions, arrays, JDKs, the compiler and launcher, IDEs - all that are concepts and tools that newcomers either need to learn or ignore.
In recent years, Oracle and OpenJDK, particularly Project Amber, have set their sights on these issues and worked on a series of improvements:
- direct execution of source code
- considerable simplification of the main class
- simplified interaction with the terminal
- enabling a programming paradigm that is better suited to small projects
- a playground that allows quick and easy experimentation
- a VS Code extension that meets developers where they are
But it's not enough to improve the technological underpinnings. These developments also enable updates to curricula that make Java more approachable and more immediately usable.
▚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.
▚Past Presentations
I gave this talk once before. See below for links to slides (as they were at that very event), videos, and other information.
