For a long time, one reason for me to update to the newer Java version was always bug fix and performance improvement. Apart from major changes like Generics in Java 1.5 and Lambdas in Java 8, there are so many small improvements, performance optimization which just goes under the radar, one such change is creating empty ArrayList and HashMap with size zero in JDK 1.7.0_40 update. Many Java developer doesn't even know about these changes, part of the blame lies on Java developers like me, as I hardly read release notes of minor Java updates.