Java Development Kit (JDK) 21, the newest long-term support (LTS) release of Oracle’s standard Java implementation, has arrived in a production release. Based on Java 21, the latest version of the Java SE (Standard Edition) platform, JDK 21 ushers in 15 features, including a key encapsulation mechanism API, virtual threads, and previews of string templates and structured concurrency. A proposed 16th feature, the experimental Shenandoah garbage collector, was dropped in June.
