Recently Java has been a victim of quite a few vulnerabilities but Oracle has bounced back by releasing security updates to the language and the runtime environment regularly.
What’s new in Java 8
Most of the enhancements and updates in Java 8 are related to the programming language. Users should feel more secure once they update to Java 8 which is the most secure version of Java to date.
Some of the enhancements of Java 8 are:
Lambda Expressions enable you to encapsulate a single unit of behavior and pass it to another code. You can use a lambda expression if you want a certain action performed on each element of a collection, when a process is completed, or when a process encounters an error. Improved Type Inference – The Java compiler takes advantage of target typing to infer the type parameters of a generic method invocation. The target type of expression is the data type that the Java compiler expects to depend on where the expression appears. For example, you can use an assignment statement’s target type for type inference in Java SE 7. However, in Java SE 8, you can use the target type for type inference in more contexts. The most prominent example is using a method invocation’s target types to infer the data types of its arguments. Annotations on Java Types – It is now possible to apply an annotation anywhere a type is used. Used in conjunction with a pluggable type system, this allows for stronger type checking of your code. Repeating Annotations – It is now possible to apply the same annotation type more than once to the same declaration or type use.
For more information on Java 8 enhancements, you may find this document useful. You may also be interested in viewing the Java 8 release notes. If you are a developer and want to know more about these changes and enhancements, here’s a good starter Java 8 tutorial from Winterbe.
Download Java 8 JRE And JDK Offline Installers
To download Java 8 JRE full installer for offline installation, you will need to click on the following link, accept the Oracle agreement and then click on the appropriate download link. Java is supported by the majority of the platforms. Java 8 JRE offline installers for all platforms You can also download the latest Java 8 runtime from here. The supported Operating Systems include Windows (32-bit + 64-bit), Linux (32-bit + 64-bit), macOS and Solaris. To download Java 8 SDK for development purposes, you may go to the following page: Java 8 JDK offline installers for all platforms