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Java SE 11 OR 17 remains the preferred production standard in 2022. Java SE 11 was released in September 2018 and will be the next major version with long term support (LTS). For these reasons, LTS support editions are only recommendations for production releases including Java SE 8 and Java SE 11.
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BUT REMEMBER it will not offer long term support (LTS). Update (March 29, 2020): Java 14 is the latest stable release and shows promising new features. Update (February 15, 2021): Java 11 remains most recent version featuring long term support (LTS) while Java 15 offers promising new features. This leaves 3 versions offering LTS (8, 11, and now 17). In 2022, the majority of applications are using Java 8+. While Java 17 offers LTS, it's certainly not unusual if your application is using 11 or even 8. It's important to note that even in 2022, many applications continue to run on Java 8 and Java 11. Java 17 offers some cool new features that may be worth leveraging for your application.That means it's the latest version of Java that will still release updates when newer versions are released later on. Why not take advantage of latest features? Upgrading shouldn't be difficult when using Docker.While most applications today are using Java 8 or 11, here are some reasons to consider upgrading to Java 17. We should note that before this long-running project, there were JDK Release Projects that released one feature and were then discontinued.Update (June 23, 2022): Java 17 is the latest version of Java available offering long term support (LTS). And, just like for Oracle, the JDK Project will also deliver new feature releases every six months. Initially, it was based only on the JDK 7, but since Java 10, the open-source reference implementation of the Java SE platform is the responsibility of the JDK Project. We should emphasize that OpenJDK is an official reference implementation of a Java Standard Edition since version SE 7. Note: the versions in italics are no longer supported. Let's take a look at the Java SE history: Oracle strongly recommends using the term JDK to refer to the Java SE (Standard Edition) Development Kit (there are also Enterprise Edition and Micro Edition platforms). It's thus named because it contains more tools than the standalone JRE, as well as the other components needed for developing Java applications. It contains a complete Java Runtime Environment, a so-called private runtime. JDK (Java Development Kit) is a software development environment used in Java platform programming.
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