Paul Jansen, CEO of software quality services vendor and publisher of the monthly Tiobe language popularity index, offered a more mixed view. “Java is the ‘here to stay’ language for enterprise applications, that is for certain,” Jansen said. However, “it is not the go-to language anymore for smaller applications. Its platform independence is still a strong feature, but it is verbose if compared to other languages and its performance could also be better,” he said.
Kohsuke Kawaguchi, developer of the Java-based Hudson CI/CD system, later forked to Jenkins, sees Java lasting many more years. “Clearly, it’s not going away,” he said. Scott Sellers, CEO and cofounder of Oracle rival and Java provider Azul, said Java remains essential to organizations. In a recent survey, Azul found that 99% of companies it surveyed use Java in their infrastructure or software, and it serves as the backbone of business-critical applications.
Java also is expanding into new frontiers such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and edge computing, Sellers said this week. “It’s been incredible to witness Java’s journey—from its early days with Sun Microsystems, to its ongoing innovation under the OpenJDK community’s stewardship,” Sellers said. “It continues to deliver what developers want and businesses need: independence, scalability, and resilience. Java is where innovation meets stability. It has been—and will continue to be—a foundational language.”
