Java Annotated Monthly – October 2015

JetBrains

Welcome to the Java Annotated Monthly, your source for all the best news and announcements in the Java community! Each month we feature articles from Java developers around the web and hand-pick the most interesting content for your digital consumption. Whether it’s a new library for the JVM or enhancements to your favorite tool, we give equal opportunity to all comers. To submit an article to the Java Annotated, send us a tweet @IntelliJIDEA. It’s Java, Annotated.

Java

Java on GPGPUs – Thanks to the introduction of lambdas and parallel streams in Java 8 and the widespread popularity of parallel computing environments like OpenCL and CUDA, there has been a resurgence of recent interest in bringing general purpose GPU computing to Java with the help of libraries like Cuda4J, Aparapi, Rootbeer and Parallel Java, with varying degrees of success. Now, the JVM plans to provide dedicated support in Project Sumatra.

Introduction to Java – Developers from other backgrounds are often surprised and dismayed to discover the extent of Java in the enterprise today, although this can be remedied with a good introduction to Java. With a proper guide, soon you too will be extolling the virtues of lambdas and streams on Java 8 and wishing you could write Kotlin instead. Or you could just skip that step and learn Kotlin from our good friends Dmitry and Svetlana. Smart move, rookie!

JVM

Kotlin: new hope in a Java 6 wasteland – In this introduction to Kotlin, Michael Pardo explains some of Kotlin’s most powerful features, from built-in null safety to extension functions. Kotlin also has fancy DSL specifically for Android development (like Groovy’s builder pattern in Gradle buildscripts) for XML, that is type safe and can be further extended with your custom Views. At JetBrains, we are focusing on polishing the Kotlin language in preparation for its initial release. You can try our latest release, Kotlin M14 which brushes up remaining language features and offers several new IDE features for completion and refactoring.

Effective Cryptography on the JVM – As experience has demonstrated, even in the best conditions, security is hard to get right. This difficulty is magnified on the JVM, a platform without direct access to low-level cryptographic instructions. KeyCzar is one library for doing crypto in pure Java, but like any other, requires some familiarity in order to be used effectively. Will Sargent will help you get acquainted with cryptography on Java with KeyCzar.

Mobile

Android Studio 1.4 – Android developers now have plenty of new reasons to upgrade, including a brand new theme editor, vector asset helper, and project templates. New instrumentation has been added for GPU rendering performance and network activity, and support for adding a Firebase mobile backend, a cloud service for online-offline database synchronization. Download the latest version of Android Studio today and give it a try!

Retofit 2 – Retrofit, a type-safe HTTP client for magically turning HTTP APIs into Java interfaces, is approaching 2.0 and the prolific Jake Wharton has a great presentation on the gritty details of migrating to the latest version. With the help of some simple annotations, you can start querying REST APIs without ever needing to think about BufferedReaders or HttpUrlConnections in the process. Existing users can refer to Marcus Pöhls’ upgrade guide from Retrofit 1.9.

Community

JavaOne 2015 – Two weeks from today we look forward to seeing you at JavaOne San Fransisco, on this very special occasion, the 20th anniversary of Java’s inaugural release. There, you will find old friends and make new ones from near and far. Visit JetBrains’ booth, learn about our latest creations and attend one of these great sessions from JetBrains’ developers. Participate in the Java Community Process at these great venues. And develop with pleasure!

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