To program in Java, we need the Java Development Kit (www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase-downloads.html). These are released every six months. At the time of recording (July 2020) the most recent version was Java 14. For this course, you can use any version from Java 11 onwards. I always recommend using the latest version if you can, otherwise use the latest stable release (Java 11, Java 17, Java 23, Java 29, etc.)

There have been some important changes regarding the licensing of the Oracle JDK. In the past, we could use the Oracle JDK to run production systems. However, this was changed in April 2019. Since then, the Oracle JDK can be used for development and for personal use. In the next section, we will look at the OpenJDK that we can use in production.