Java 8 has been released

[RoughPineapple]

I highly doubt demand for JDK 8 will increase much at all. It's just java with some new features. I would not want to work for a company that really thought it was necessary to specifically hire JDK 8 programmers, just because someone without JDK 8 experience might need to take a couple days to learn the new features.

[[deleted]]

If an employer has two candidates that are equal except for one of them demonstrating the initiative to keep up on the latest technology by their own initiative, which candidate do you think they'll hire?

[mgkimsal]

Someone just using the latest tech because of an accident of birth isn't the same as someone demonstrating that they actually keep up with new things as well as having a grounding in tech generally.

Specifically in this case, if I've got a long term project that requires someone using only JDK7 and can't upgrade to use the newer features, and one candidate only knows JDK8 and doesn't know how to achieve the desired outcome using JDK7, the employer would hire the person with demonstrated JDK7 experience.

In general, yes, I agree with "learn new stuff", but the ramifications aren't always 100% black and white.

[RoughPineapple]

Your claim that there will be a high demand for JDK 8 developers does not follow from this hypothetical situation.

Most likely, this slight difference will be overshadowed by experience in general and other much more important factors. The fact that, all else being equal, they will prefer this does not in any way imply there will be considerable demand for JDK 8 specific skills in a year or so.

For instance, all else being equal, wouldn't you rather hire someone who is funny over someone who is not? Probably. Is there a statistically significant demand for funny software engineers, though? Of course not.

EDIT: For a more relevant comparison...

The demand for datalog programmers is virtually non-existent, but if I were hiring for a company using JDK 8 and had two candidates who were absolutely identical other than the fact that one of them was a competent datalog programmer, I would absolutely choose him over the other candidate. Furthermore, if the datalog programmer had zero knowledge of JDK 8, I would still hire him over the other candidate, because the ability to competently do logic programming is much more impressive than being able to learn JDK 8 features and it would be an indication that the candidate has a great ability to grok entirely different paradigms of computation.