Lambda vs anonymous inner class performance: reducing the load on the ClassLoader?

Question

I would like to know how big of a benefit lambdas have in Java 8. I agree that it might be more readable sometimes to use lambdas, but does it have really such of a big impa

Answer 1

Oracle has a presentation covering some of the performance differences. It appears that there are quite a few factors that impact performance of lambdas vs. anonymous classes.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/jvmls2013kuksen-2014088.pdf

Answer 2

After reading the PDF linked from @Brett Okken I believe the following holds:

• Inner classes have a slightly slower performance on first use, but it seems negliable.
• Lambdas have a slower performance when called often because of the bigger stack they build up when called.

I will stick with the following:

• Use Lambdas for readability when a few milliseconds performance loss is not a problem (GUI stuff, etc.)
• Use inner classes for often called, performance critical functions.