Watch: Oracle’s Sharat Chander on Java 16 and its six-month release cycle

Multinational information technology (IT) major Oracle on Tuesday announced the general availability of Java 16 (Oracle JDK 16), including 17 new enhancements to the Java development Kit (JDK) project.  

In September 2017, Oracle committed to six- month update cycles for the Java programming language to make new features more predictable for developers to adapt and learn.  

A prominent update in Java 16 is the migration of the OpenJDK Community's source code repositories from Mercurial (hg) to Git, throwing open the source code of OpenJDK to GitHub users. 

Secondly, the latest update brings to the fore a new packaging tool (codenamed the JEP 392) that will allow Java applications to be distributed, installed, and uninstalled in a manner familiar to users. 

These include native packaging formats such as .msi and .exe on Windows, .pkg and .dmg on macOS, and .deb and .rpm on Linux. 

In an interview with TechCircle, Sharat Chander, director for Java product management and developer engagement at Oracle, spoke about the six-month update cycle and how Oracle ensures that developers are reskilled to stay ahead of the game. 

Chander, who has been an active participant in the Java community for over 15 years, also spoke about his favorite enhancements in the latest update, including the move to GitHub.  

Demand for artificial intelligence-machine learning (AI/ML) based coding and languages that are easier to comprehend has increased in the past few years. In the interview, Chander also explained how Oracle will stay relevant among other languages such as Python, Javascript, Swift and Go, to name a few.