Java 24 at JavaOne: Speed, Security, and the Future of AI Development

JavaOne is back, baby! And by that, I mean, back in the Bay Area. It was part of a little trade show diaspora that saw Oracle OpenWorld, among others, decamping to Las Vegas, but it returned this week as a stand-alone event to what is sure to be a packed conference facility at Oracle headquarters in Redwood Shores.

For a language that’s been around since the dawn of the dot-com boom, Java is evolving faster than ever. The release of Java 24 isn’t just another notch in the six-month update cadence; it’s a statement of intent—a move toward an AI-ready future, stronger security against quantum threats, and a development experience built for the modern world.

I spoke with the Java team at Oracle last week about upcoming Java 24 release. The big takeaways? With the new release, they're doubling down on AI, embracing post-quantum cryptography, and making development smoother than ever.

Java 24: A Stepping Stone to Java 25
In the grand scheme of things, Java 24 is a stepping stone—but an important one.
With Java 25 set to be a long-term support (LTS) release in September, Java 24 serves as a testing ground. It’s the version where developers experiment with new features, provide feedback, and refine the platform before Java 25 locks those changes in for years to come.

Among other things, this release is making coding less frustrating. Here’s how:

• Streamlined module import declarations reduce dependency headaches.
• Ahead-of-time class loading and linking shaves critical seconds off startup times.
• More intuitive syntax updates remove Java’s infamous boilerplate bloat.
• New vector APIs unlock performance boosts for complex computations.

At the same time, Java’s learning curve is getting gentler. Oracle has just announced that it is launching Learn.Java, a new educational platform aimed at students, teachers, and self-taught developers. If Java has a reputation for being harder to learn than Python, this initiative aims to fix that.

AI, Java, and the Battle for Code Intelligence
AI isn’t just disrupting search engines and chatbots, it’s reshaping how developers write code, and Java 24 embraces that change with AI integration. The question isn’t simply how can Java support machine learning workloads, the Java team told me. It’s how can Java become the best platform for AI-driven development. Here's how:

• Project Panama: A bridge between Java and native libraries, making it easier for developers to tap into AI inference engines.
• Project Valhalla: Optimizing primitive data handling, a critical improvement for AI-heavy computation.
• Project Babylon: Java’s answer to high-performance distributed computing, making AI workflows smoother across GPU-powered cloud environments.

By streamlining these capabilities, Oracle is position Java as an AI-first development platform, where everything from machine learning to large-scale automation can run seamlessly within the Java ecosystem.

The Post Crypto Future
Forget AI for a second. A possibly bigger, potentially existential crisis looms large: Quantum computing is coming, and it’s going to break the internet’s security as we know it.

That’s not paranoia; it's the consensus among cryptographers worldwide. The encryption algorithms protecting your bank transactions, medical records, and login credentials? Quantum computers could crack them like a two-dollar padlock.

Enter Java 24’s post-quantum cryptography updates.

While the world waits for quantum-resistant encryption standards to be finalized, Java jocks are already building the foundation. New cryptographic APIs in JDK 24 will serve as the first wave of quantum-resistant security primitives, ensuring that when quantum computers become a real-world threat, Java developers aren’t caught flat-footed.

A Sign of Things to Come
From AI integration to quantum security and a smoother development experience, Java 24 lays the groundwork for the future of enterprise software. And with JavaOne returning as a standalone event for the first time in years, it’s clear that Java isn’t just surviving—it’s thriving.

Posted by John K. Waters on March 18, 2025