Which version of Java do you want to learn?

- [Instructor] This course teaches how to use the programming language, Java Standard Edition, or SE version 8. You may have noticed that there are other versions of the Java Essential training course available. If you're not sure which of these courses is right for you, here's some information to help you decide. Java SE 8 was released in 2014, but as of late 2020, this version is still used by a majority of Java developers according to various surveys of the developer community. If you're working on legacy applications or even new software that's based on Java 8, then this is the right course for you. And if you want to use Java to build Android apps, then you're definitely in the right place, because the Android SDK doesn't implement any Java features that were added after this version. But, if you're working with more recent versions of Java, there are other options. There's a series of two courses that were recorded with Java 9, which was released in 2017. Java 8 and 9 syntax are mostly the same, but Java 9 was the first version that supported modularity, that is, the ability to package the Java runtime and only include the APIs that you need for your particular application. But Java 9 was what Oracle calls a non-long-term support release. Oracle support for Java 9 lapsed a couple of years ago, and Java 11, a long term support release was released in September of 2018. Java 9 usage rate among developers was very low as of late 2020. So that brings us to Java 11 and more recent versions. As of late 2020, Java 11 was the most recent long-term support release with support guaranteed by Oracle through 2026. Because of this support, as of this date, Java 11's popularity in the developer community is second only to Java 8. Java 11's syntax can be significantly different from earlier versions due to a new feature called type inference. This feature lets you create variables without explicit type declarations using the keyword var and allows the compiler to figure out the types based on the variables initial values. So if you're using Java 11 or any more recent version, you might want to check out this course instead of earlier versions. It was actually recorded with Java 13, a non-long-term support release, but everything in the course applies to Java 11 and later, and there are other courses available. These first look courses cover the features that were released in these non-long-term support releases. And there's also a course available that teaches you how to migrate when you decide it's time to move beyond Java 8.