Concurrent Accumulators

One of the most common scenarios in concurrent programming is updating of numeric counters accessed by multiple threads. There have been many idioms to do this over the years, starting from synchronized blocks (which introduce a high level of contention), to read/write locks to AtomicInteger(s). While the last ones are more efficient, as they rely directly on processor CAS instructions, they require a higher degree of familiarity to implement the required semantics correctly.

With Java 8 this problem is solved at the framework level with new concurrent accumulator classes that enable you to very efficiently increase / decrease the value of a counter in a thread safe manner. This is really a case where it’s not a question of taste, or preference – using these new classes in your code is really a no-brainer.

Are there any other language features you think every developers should know about? Add them in the comments section.