The new java.time package

While lambdas and streams are extremely important game-changing updates, with Java 8, we were given another long-awaited change that was, at least in some circles, just as exciting: a new date/time API. Anyone who has worked with dates and times in Java knows the pain of java.util.Calendar and company. Clearly, you can get your work done, but it's not always pretty. Many developers found the API too painful to use, so they integrated the extremely popular Joda Time library into their projects. The Java architects agreed, and engaged Joda Time's author, Stephen Colebourne, to lead JSR 310, which brought a version of Joda Time (fixing various design flaws) to the platform. We'll take a detailed look at how to use some of these new APIs in our date/time calculator later in the book.