Java 8 Lambdas and Streams

The final version of Java 8 was released in 2014, and it is by far the most significant upgrade to the Java programming language since at least 2004, probably since Java's inception. In general, Java 8's high-level goals were to make more flexible code, to better use multiple cores, and to more easily deal with large data sets. In specific, there are four main reasons that it is important to know Java 8:

More flexible and reusable code (thanks to lambdas). Lambda expressions in Java 8 are a way of representing "functions", and their judicious use can make your code significantly more adapatable and reusable.

Convenience (thanks to high-level Stream methods). Streams are wrappers around collections (or other data sources) that use lambda expressions pervasively. They support many convenient and high-performance operations that use lambdas, including "map", "reduce", "filter", and "forEach". These methods make many types of code much simpler to write, as compared to the comparatively clunky and low-level Collection methods.

Faster and more memory efficient code (thanks to lazy evaluation and automatic parallelization). Streams support lazy evaluation, so if you map firstName over Employees, filter ones that start with "P", then choose the first, it really only maps and filters until the first match. Streams can also be parallel, so that the operations are automatically done in parallel, without any explicit multithreading code.

Adapt to the times. Others will be using lambdas and streams, since they are standard parts of Java SE as of 2014. So, you have to learn the Java 8 features simply to be able to use and modify others’ code. Besides, once you get a taste of their power, you will want to use the new features frequently.

Despite the power of these new Java 8 features, existing Java developers have been slow to adopt it. Why? Because they find these features initimidating and difficult to understand. In this fast-paced mini course, famous Java developer, author and instructor Marty Hall will show you how to effectively apply these techniques in your own code. The course will include hands-on exercises (with solutions!) to reinforce the concepts covered in the lectures.

Prerequisites

This course assumes that you have moderate to strong previous Java experience. It covers only the new features of the language that were added in Java 8.

__________________________________________________________________

About the Trainer

Marty Hall is president of coreservlets.com, Inc., a training and consulting company focusing on Java EE, Rich Internet Apps with Ajax and jQuery, and Android development. He was formerly a Principal Computer Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, where he designed and developed distributed applications (mostly for government clients) in the Research and Technology Development Center.

Marty is the author of Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages (first and second editions), More Servlets and JavaServer Pages, andCore Web Programming (first and second editions) from Prentice Hall and Sun Microsystems Press. He is also the co-author of the upcoming JSF 2.2 edition of Core JavaServer Faces, the top-selling JSF textbook worldwide. Core Servlets and JSP was the single most popular book on servlets and JSP internationally, was selected by amazon.com as one of the best five computer programming books of the year, has been the overall weekly #1 bestseller at fatbrain.com nine different times, and spent more than six months as one of the top 10 best-selling computer-related books atamazon.com and at Borders stores nationwide. Available versions include Bulgarian, Chinese Simplified Script (Mainland China), Chinese Traditional Script (Taiwan), Czech, Greek, English (North/South America, Europe), English (one version published in USA and another version reprinted in India), French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. In addition be being best sellers in industry, Marty's books have been widely used in academia (including Stanford, MIT, Princeton, U.C. Berkeley, UCLA, and Johns Hopkins).

For the last 25+ years Marty has been an adjunct faculty member in the Johns Hopkins University part-time graduate program in Computer Science, where he received the Dean's Teaching Excellence award from the JHU School of Engineering and was featured on the program home page and in much of their advertising literature (Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, etc.). In addition to teaching in the Johns Hopkins program, one of the three largest graduate CS programs in the US, he also directs two JHU concentration areas and serves on the Computer Science Program Committee. Marty has also taught full-semester courses at Towson University and short courses and guest lectures at University of Maryland Baltimore County, University of Michigan, Loyola College, Shepherd College, the University of the Philippines, and the Tec de Monterrey (Mexico).  You can read more about him here.

_________________________________________________________________