Introduction to stream apis in Java

Java Stream APIs are a set of classes and interfaces introduced in Java 8 that make it easier to work with collections, such as lists or arrays, by providing a straightforward and readable approach to processing elements, instead of writing complex loops and conditionals to iterate over collections.
With Stream APIs, you can chain multiple operations together in a fluent style, making it easier to understand the sequence of transformations applied to the data in a collection.

Why Use Stream APIs?

Stream APIs enable declarative programming, where you specify what you want to achieve rather than how to achieve it.
Stream APIs provide a rich set of built-in operations for common data processing tasks which are optimized and can be used directly without writing custom code, saving development time and effort.
Stream APIs support parallel processing, allowing operations to be executed concurrently on multiple threads. This can lead to significant performance improvements, especially when dealing with large datasets.
Stream APIs use lazy evaluation, meaning intermediate operations are only executed when necessary. This can lead to more efficient use of resources, as operations are only performed on elements that are actually needed in the final result.
Stream APIs encourage immutability by not modifying the original data source but instead producing new streams with the desired transformations applied.
In functional programming, functions are treated as first-class citizens, meaning they can be passed around as arguments to other functions or returned as results from other functions. Java Stream APIs utilize higher-order functions, like map, filter, and reduce, which can take other functions as arguments.