Author | Nikos Vaggalis
Translated by | Sambodhi
Planning | Yu Ying
It's been a while since we delved into the Java ecosystem in Where's Java Going In 2020. JRebel's latest Java Development Trends and Analysis 2022 report provides an opportunity to revisit the Java ecosystem. So, according to JRebel's report, this article "Where Will Java Go in 2022" is out.
This new report, which marks the tenth anniversary of the JRebel Initiative, examines the state of the Java ecosystem from the following perspectives:
Adoption and usage trends for microservices
CI/CD build time and commit frequency
Popular frameworks, application servers, virtual machines, and other tools
Overall productivity for developers, including a variety of challenges and obstacles
The report received 846 responses, half of which were developers, a majority, and the rest were made up of Java architects, team leaders, directors, consultants, and others.
On top of that, 31% of the sample worked in large enterprises with more than 1,000 employees, so this report is a good illustration of Java's use in industry.
Why is Java always favored by businesses?
Businesses have been and are talking about Java. We can see how much they rely on Java from the Fortune 500 companies. Yes, blue chips love Java. There are many reasons for this. Businesses value backwards compatibility most, and they are notoriously "allergic" to aggressive updates and upgrades. Systems written in Java 5 20 years ago should be able to compile and run under version 8. For them, stability is the most important thing.
Another important metric is the adoption of java versions and whether the Oracle JDK is more popular than openJDK. The release cycle after version 8 is much faster, and now that it's released to version 18, you'd expect most people to migrate to the most recent version. But this is not the case. As highlighted in the survey, 37% of developers surveyed still use the ancient Version 8 (58% in 2020), although 29% of Java 11 (22% in 2020) have made progress. This suggests that people prefer stability to mastering all the latest bells and whistles.
As for OpenJDK vs. Oracle, there are some changes compared to JRebel's 2020 report, which comments:
It was surprising to see how many of our survey respondents were paying for oracle JDKs. I fully expect the open source option to have a larger market share.
And put forward a reason:
In our survey, there were a large number of Java 8 developer representatives. We believe that the number of developers using Java 8 indicates that the project has not been updated for a long time, which may be the reason for keeping the application in the Oracle distribution.
And added:
The support provided by the Oracle JDK may be more important than we think.
Oracle's JDK share fell to 36 percent this year from 48 percent in 2020. GraalVM rose from 0.25% in 2020 to 3% this year.
The remaining questions are about performance issues, microservices, and CI/CD.
Respondents developed the architecture of the main applications based on microservices (32%), followed by old-fashioned monolithic applications (22%).
I think it must be due to the comeback of JVM-based frameworks that have put Java at the forefront of microservices. I'm referring to Quarkus, which, along with Micronaut and Helidon, is part of a new open source framework consortium that has emerged over the past few years to advance java's use in microservices. Their AOT capabilities, combined with GraalVM's native image executables, should really make a difference.
Although Spring Boot still occupies the first place, with a high of 74%, followed by Quarkus, Vert.x and DropWizard at 5%, 2% and 1% respectively, ranking in the top four. However, the devil is in the details. Quarkus has a 0.5% share in 2020, compared to 82% for Spring Boot. Given that Spring is the dominant framework, aren't they using it in conjunction with Spring Native, which allows you to compile Spring applications into native images using the GraalVM native image compiler?
One of the main issues mentioned in the report is that the time it takes to start a service in a microservices application has increased since the initial conversion/creation of the microservice. The survey found that a total of 60% of people have had such experiences, while 35% have not been affected.
Another disappointing result is that after breaking a monomer into different manageable parts, not only did they not get a better redeployment time, but most people found that the redeployment time was more than 5 minutes; others exceeded 10 minutes.
Under the Java Virtual Machine Platforms category, Docker is by far the most popular choice, accounting for 41% of the total respondents. Kubernetes came in second at 26 percent, while VMWare came in third at 16 percent. Jenkins was named the most popular CI/CD technology at 46 percent, followed by Github Actions at 16 percent.
Among other categories, Amazon Cloud Technology is the most popular PaaS vendor, with Tomcat once again being the top choice for application servers, with Maven being the most popular build tool at 68 percent and Gradle at 23 percent, followed by a close second. Maven is up from 44% in 2020 and Gradle is down from 47% in 2020. This suggests that while Gradle is exaggerated, it proves too cumbersome for Java development in general; it's best to stick with Android.
To summarize the most interesting findings, enterprises are turning to microservices not because of faster times to launch and redeploy, but because of other factors such as modularity and flexibility. Another notable aspect is that Spring Boot is still the dominant way of dealing with Java microservices, while other newer competitors must cover many areas to reach the same level. This gets us thinking about the use of AOT and GraalVM. Has it been overrated with low-level hype, or is it too new to be seen as a viable alternative to this day?
The most important conclusion is that while technology is constantly changing, no one can wait to embrace it. This is particularly resonant among large enterprises, which prefer stability to innovation. Of course, at some point, they will eventually embark on this path as well, but it will take a lot of time and careful planning.
https://www.i-programmer.info/news/80-java/15317-wheres-java-going-in-2022.html