One of the ultimate strengths of Java is its strong notion of backwards compatibility: Java applications and libraries built many years ago oftentimes run without problems on current JVMs, and the compiler of current JDKs can produce byte code, that is executable with earlier Java versions. For instance, JDK 16 supports byte code levels going back as far as to Java 1.7; But: hic sunt dracones. The emitted byte code level is just one part of the story. It’s equally important to consider whic...
