Use higher versions of Java

Seriously, it's crazy what sort of features have been added since Java 8. I hardly recognize the language anymore...

Examples:

Constructing Lists

Before, you had to do something like Arrays.asList(new String[]{"a", "b", "c"}), but in Java 9+ you have List.of("a", "b", "c"), some huge savings.

var keyword

Self explanatory - since Java 10, instead of ReallyLongTypeName a = x();, you now can just do var a = x();.

Strings

In Java 11, some cool stuff for Strings was added that could potentially be useful - for example, .lines() returns the String separated by newlines as a Stream (saving over .split("\n")).

Fancy switch statements

Before:

switch(thing){case A:return "a";case B:return "b";default:return "x";}

Java 13+:

return switch(thing){case A->"a";case B->"b";default->"x";}

You can even have blocks of statements in any of the cases using {}.

There are many other new features that I did not think are relavant to golf, and many many others that I'm sure I missed - there is just so much stuff to unpack. Please contribute if you find something I missed!

posted about 3 years ago

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Quintec‭

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