1. Lambda expressions. Lambda expressions (or closures) are popular in functional programming. Until now, Java didn’t support them and therefore was missing one of the best ways to write code.

Lambda expressions are the biggest features integrated into Java 8. This functional programming paradigm was, until now, missing from Java. Its inclusion now will only help Java grow in the right ...

The advent of Java 8 in particular added important features taken from functional programming idioms that make code shorter, more reliable, and more expressive.

In response to complaints about Java's verbosity, the latest version, Java 8, added features taken from functional programming idioms that make Java code shorter and more expressive. The Java 9 ...

This is one of the major language features of Java 8, and because of its implementation, about the only one that is backward compatible to Android 2.3 Gingerbread.