The things I'm most interested in are JNI-related. Project Panama[1] will bring a ton of improvements. These aren't stable in JDK 21 but I'm anticipating their stability in the near(ish) future (JDK 22? 23?). I'd like to experiment with some of the preview APIs in JDK 21 but given I can't even use JDK 8 I'm wondering if I'm just SOL and if I should abandon all hope for me using things from Project Panama.

[1]: https://openjdk.org/projects/panama/