For Java, it’s easy:

- v8: we added functions and streams. It basically changes everything. We also added asynchronous stuff but you don’t care yet.

- v11: we added built-in async http. Now you really want to have a look at that asynchronous stuff from v8.

And that’s pretty much it.

By the way, we are at Java15 at the moment. And don’t ask me what happened in seasons 9, 10, 12, 13, 14 and 15. Like grey’s anatomy, nobody knows and nobody cares.

Only mediocre developers don't care about mastering their tool, but it seems that such mediocrity is quite institutionalized in the Java ecosystem. Java is evolving very quickly and will soon have e.g pattern matching.

Am I the only one to consider "var" as a pointless way to declare a typed variable in Java? Especially in very classical cases like interface/implementation:

AnInterface<String, String> foo = new AnImplementation<>();

True. Node is an interesting one since the odd number releases are for more for testing new features while the even numbered ones are the stable/lts builds. Odd numbered releases are become EOL as soon as the next major release is out. I always try to tell the devs I work with to stick to the even numbered ones because of that.