I have been spending several weeks having Java version problems in a project I'm working on with other people. Could someone explain to me why the fuck Java JDK would jump from version 1.80 to 9?

Because java 9 comes after java 8?

The previous version was 1.8?

They just decided to drop the 1.

Java is called normally Java X from it's version string 1.X.
http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/223

"What's the difference between releases named "JDK 7 Update 60", "1.7.0_60", and "JDK 7u60"?
These are just different names for the same release. These differences make it difficult to identify and verify equivalent releases."

The new Regex Format is [1-9][0-9]*((\.0)*\.[1-9][0-9]*)*

"If we retain the initial 1 then JDK version numbers will continue to violate the principles of Semantic Versioning and developers new to Java will continue to be confused about the difference between, e.g., 1.9 and 9.

There is some risk in dropping the initial 1. There are many ways to compare version numbers; some will work correctly, while some will not."

The JEP announcing this change was made in 2014/10/20 18:27 and the change was delivered September last year, so you had plenty of time.

Wait till Java 10 comes out. running java -v will output 18.3

@junners It was released on 2018-03-20 already

@junners no it won't