Java 8, which debuted way back in March 2014, was a big step forward for the programming language, introducing a list of features that promised to make coding in Java easier and more concise than ever before.
Unfortunately, Android developers wouldn’t feel the benefits of these features for a while, as Google experimented with bringing Java 8 to the Android platform via Jack (Java Android Compiler Kit) before deprecating Jack in favour of supporting Java 8 natively in Android Studio.
Now, with the release of Android Studio 3.0, we finally have a version of the Android toolchain that has built-in support for some of Java 8’s most important features.
In this series, I’m going to show you how to remove a ton of boilerplate code from your projects, process huge amounts of data with ease, and even embrace a more functional style in your Java programing with Java 8. We'll be taking an in-depth look at the Java 8 features that you can start using today.
By the time you’ve completed this series, you’ll be ready to use all of the following Java 8 features in your Android projects:
- lambda expressions
- method references
- default methods
- static interface methods
- type annotations
- repeating annotations
- functional interfaces
- the Stream API
