It doesn't break compatibility. (Almost) ever. Meaning that (almost) all the code that used to compile on Java 1, or binary code compiled with the JDK 1.0, stil

It doesn't break compatibility. (Almost) ever. Meaning that (almost) all the code that used to compile on Java 1, or binary code compiled with the JDK 1.0, still works with the JDK 8. (It's the main reason why generics in Java suck, btw: extreme backward compatiblity.)