This Best of Java Hands-On Workshop introduces various improvements included in the latest and greatest Java 17. This represents an LTS Version and therefore is of special interest and importance. We will look at language and syntax improvements, namely, among others, switch, records, text blocks, and var. Besides new API features in streams, strings and files, optionals, concurrency, and HTTP/2, many more are covered. But we look at tooling too. JShell gets interesting now, and the latest tool jpackage may be relevant for packaging self-contained Java applications. With a lot of hands-on exercises, your knowledge will be established and enhanced. All in all, you will receive a thorough overview of important features in modern Java. This should help software engineers and architects decide if Java 17 is valuable for their products and when switching to it. Of course, modularization is also covered, but only in an overview fashion since it is not quite yet established in many companies in the real world. In summary, Java gets cooler and better with every new release. Let’s look together at important and helpful new features in the language, APIs, and Tooling.