A comprehensive update on Java's four major OpenJDK projects heading into 2022. Project Valhalla is introducing value classes and primitive classes to unify Java's type system and enable generics over primitives like ArrayList<int>. Project Panama is progressing its foreign memory/access APIs and vector API toward preview status in JDK 18. Project Loom has drafted JEPs for virtual threads and a structured concurrency API (StructuredExecutor), aiming to make concurrent code as simple as synchronous code. Project Amber is finalizing pattern matching basics (patterns in switch, sealed classes, deconstruction patterns) with JDK 19 as a likely milestone, and exploring template strings. All four projects are described as on or approaching the home stretch.
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