Until the 2014 release of Java 8, a common complaint you heard from outside the Java community was that Java, the language, had stalled. The JVM, by comparison, was widely admired. But even though the JVM supported numerous languages (which we've covered individually in this magazine over the last four years), Java was still its principal language and, well, that was getting long in the tooth. Many of us knew this point of view was exaggerated. The Java team had widely and frequently communicated the innovations it was working on and the wave of innovations that would be coming after those. Java 8 indeed disarmed ritics who had claimed that Java wasn't keeping up with other languages. And the changes in Java 9 and 10, as well as the upcoming Java 11, are demonstrating the torrid pace at which new features will be delivered. Java remains either the #1 or #2 most widely used language (depending on whose statistics you're looking at), which shows how effective the new features have been in keeping the language relevant, useful, and practical.