Modern JavaScript - Why Now? #reactjs #100

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Modern Java is defined by these five programming paradigms and coding styles: functional programming, modular applications, reactive programming, fluent interface and stream-based programming. These tools are crucial in solving today’s computing challenges. Let’s look at how.

Functional programming is a paradigm that forces developers to think in terms of functions instead of classes. Functions are stateless and without side-effects. Avoiding state can lead to better software because managing state is notoriously difficult to get right, especially in high-performance, concurrent applications. Functional programming is also a natural fit for multi-core parallel programming and the best way to squeeze more performance out of modern CPUs.

Java 9 introduced modularity to the platform and allows Java applications to be deployed in smaller pieces. It also introduced the concept of linking, allowing a Java application to be deployed without a pre-installed JVM. That is, the application is bundled with its own streamlined JVM that contains only the bits it actually uses. Even the Java platform has been modularized making it aligned with today’s world of containers and serverless computing that play well with small footprints and quick start up times.

Reactive programming is another Java 9 addition and controls how applications can consume large sets of data without overwhelming the platform. Newly built JDK libraries such as HTTP 2 have been designed with reactive support to allow large chunks of data to be consumed with back-pressure for better flow control and less resource consumption.

Finally, Java Streams library allows algorithms to be coded declaratively meaning the developer specifies what they want, not how they want it. This improves code quality because all the plumbing code is handled by the library itself. The fluent interface style is just a way to express streams algorithm in one continuous line.

The disparities between Classic and Modern Java are quite striking. You can see the differences by comparing a simple algorithm written in both styles. The algorithm shown below reads a list of sentences and returns those that are palindromes. The first snippet is written in Classic Java while the second, in Modern Java, is almost a new language onto itself.