Chapter 1 ■ the Different faCes of Java: Create a Java 9 Development WorkstationDownloading and Installing the Oracle Java 8 JDK
You may be wondering why we are downloading the latest version of Java 8 (currently update 152) right now,
given that this is a Java 9 Games book. The reason is because although Java 9 JDK came out in September, the
NetBeans 9 IDE version is still in beta (I wrote the book while it was still in alpha), meaning that NetBeans 9
(beta) still runs on top of Java 8, due to the complexity of modules in Java 9 (meaning the programmers are still
modularizing NetBeans 9 so that it will be coded in Java 9). Once NetBeans 9 is released, it is likely that it will
run directly on top of Java 9 JDK. There is a way to get to a webpage on the Oracle Tech Network that has links
to both Java 8u144 and Java 9.0, located at the URL http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/overview/
index.html as seen in Figure 1-7. The download links for both JDKs are located at the very bottom of the
webpage, so just click the Download link for the Java SE 8 update 144 JDK (already upgraded to 8u152).
Figure 1-7. The Oracle Tech Network Java SE Overview webpage, which has links to Java 9 JDK as well as to
Java 8u144
As you can see, there is also a red End of Public Updates for Oracle JDK 8 admonition, circled in the
middle of the webpage. Java 8 does not have a lot of bugs, as after all it has been through over 144 updates
and is quite solid! Java 9 is a rewrite, in a sense, as it has been remodularized, so all the “wiring” of API
classes and packages (into modules) is being redone, which is why NetBeans 9 (which was coded in Java) is
not complete (coded and debugged) at the same time as Java 9. Previous versions of Java and NetBeans have
come out at (or near) the same time, and had a NetBeans bundle download (shown for NetBeans 8.2 at the
top of Figure 1-8, via the download icon on the right hand side).