2025 Update of my ebook 'Getting Started with Java on the Raspberry Pi'

2025 is an important year as Java 25 got released, a version which will be supported for many more years. On top of that, the Pi4J library will soon be published as V4.0.0 with a new plugin making use of the FFM API, a new feature added to Java in version 22.

A new version of my book “Getting Started with Java on the Raspberry Pi” is now available on LeanPub. I reduced the “Percent Complete” of this book from 100% to 80% as I still need to review many of the examples. So while all the content is, of course, still valid, some examples will be further improved in the following months. But I still wanted to publish this new version as it aligns with the Java 25 release, and the talks I will give a Devoxx in Belgium (October) and JFall in the Netherlands (November). If you buy the book now, you will get any future update for free!

These are the changes already done in this 2025 release:

• Moved some of the interviews into the chapters to have a consistent numbering in the table of contents matching the sources on GitHub.
• Full review to update all code examples to Java 25 and the dependencies to the most recent versions. (ongoing)
• Chapter 1: Update of the introduction
• Chapter 2: Tools and Hardware Used in this Book
  • Updated preparing an SD card for the Raspberry Pi
  • Added “Safety Instructions”
• Chapter 3: Choosing an IDE
  • Simplified installation of VSC on Raspberry Pi
  • Added JBang extension to VSC to be used in “Chapter 9: Pi4J”
• Chapter 4: About Java
  • Extra info in Java history
  • Updated timelines
  • Added new features in Java 20 - 25
  • Added info about STS versus LTS
  • Installing Azul Zulu on Windows and Raspberry Pi
• Chapter 5: The Raspberry Pi
  • Added history of Raspberry Pi (Company and Foundation)
  • Updated Raspberry Pi product line
  • Extended info about PWM
• Chapter 9: Pi4J
  • Explained difference V1 versus V2+ of Pi4J
  • Reworked examples to use Pi4J V4, Java 25, and JBang (ongoing)