Still using Java 8? A large number of developers have turned to Java 11

Java is a widely used computer programming language with the characteristics of cross-platform, object-oriented, and generic programming. It is widely used in enterprise-level Web application development and mobile application development. Java was launched by Sun Microsystems in May 1995 and has a history of 26 years. However, Java still maintains a strong momentum of development, occupying the top 3 in the TIOBE programming language rankings.

Since the release of Java 9 in September 2017, Java has maintained a stable release rate-a new version is released every 6 months. Currently, the latest version of Java 16 was launched in March this year.

With so many Java versions, which version is the most popular? The previous "JetBrains 2020 Java Survey Report" and the "2021 Java Developer Productivity Report" both show that Java 8 is the most popular version.

However, a recent network security company Snyk released a report that developers have gradually migrated from Java 8 to Java 11.

This report presents the results of an annual survey of the state of the JVM ecosystem. The survey was jointly implemented by Snyk and Azul, and was conducted in a 6-week period from February to March 2021, covering 2,000 Java developers.

Next, let's take a look at what new insights this report brings.

AdoptOpenJDK is the most commonly used JDK in production

The survey shows that 44.1% of respondents use the free AdoptOpenJDK distribution in production. Nevertheless, Oracle is still an important player in the market, 28% of respondents use its OpenJDK to build, and the proportion of commercial Oracle JDK also accounted for 23%.

Version change: Developers migrate from Java 8 to Java 11

The survey shows that currently 61.5% of the interviewed developers use Java 11, which is higher than 60% of Java 8. In addition, nearly 12% of respondents use Java 15 (the latest version of Java during the survey).

It should be noted that 40% of the respondents in the survey used more than one Java version, which means that there may be more developers upgrading to Java 8 or higher.

The most popular language in the JVM: Kotlin is second only to Java

In the past few years, the variety of JVM languages has increased, but Java still tops the list, with 91% of surveyed developers using Java. Kotlin ranks second, accounting for 17.7%, and its popularity has increased compared to last year.

The most mainstream IDE: IntelliJ IDEA

The most widely used IDE in the Java ecosystem is still JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA, which is used by more than 70% of JVM developers. In addition, the use of Visual Studio Code and Apache Netbeans has grown rapidly. The survey shows that more than half of the JVM community members consider it appropriate to use multiple IDEs.

The most popular build system in the Java ecosystem: Maven

The survey shows that Maven is still the most popular build system in the Java ecosystem. More than 76% of JVM developers use Maven to build applications, which is an increase compared to last year. Gradle ranks second with 38.1%, which is also an increase compared to last year.

Spring is still the dominant framework in the Java ecosystem

The survey shows that Spring is still the dominant framework in the Java ecosystem, and Spring Boot and Spring MVC are the most mainstream frameworks in the JVM. More than half of the developers use Spring Boot, and nearly 1/3 of the developers use Spring MVC.

Report address: https://res.cloudinary.com/snyk/image/upload/v1623860216/reports/jvm-ecosystem-report-2021.pdf