Introduction to Java Advanced Features
Once you have mastered the basics of Object-Oriented Programming, Collections, Exceptions, and I/O, you are ready to explore the features that make Java a powerhouse for building massive enterprise-level applications, frameworks, and tools.
Java Reflection API
Java Reflection is an API that allows a program to inspect and modify its own runtime structure. Using the Reflection API, you can examine classes, interfaces, constructors, methods, and fields at runtime, even if you did not know their names at compile time.
Java Annotations
Annotations are a form of metadata that provide data about a program but are not part of the program itself. Annotations have no direct effect on the operation of the code they annotate.
Virtual Threads (Project Loom)
Introduced as a standard feature in Java 21, Virtual Threads (developed under Project Loom) are lightweight threads that drastically reduce the effort of writing, maintaining, and observing high-throughput concurrent applications.
Records, Sealed Classes & Pattern Matching
Modern Java versions (Java 16 through Java 21) introduced features designed to simplify data modeling, restrict class inheritance hierarchies, and clean up complex conditional logic using pattern matching.