This isn’t a talk about microservices, NoSQL, container solutions or hip new frameworks. This talk will show some of the standard Java APIs that are part of Java since version 5, 6, 7 or 8. All those features are very helpful to create maintainable and future-proof applications, regardless of whether JavaEE, Spring, JavaFX or any other framework is used. The talk will give an overview of some important standard concepts and APIs of Java like annotations, null values and concurrency. Based on an overview of these topics and some samples, the talk will answer questions like: How can I create my own annotations? How can I create a plugin structure without using frameworks like OSGI? What’s the best way to handle NullPointerExceptions? How can I write concurrent code that is still maintainable?