The fact that Java is one of the most popular programming languages by literally all of the main criteria is practically not questioned by anyone. However, just so as not to be unfounded, some basic information and statistics.
Java is the King
Can Java really be called the most popular language in the world? With some reservations, but yes. Most modern companies, in all industries and market sectors, use Java. And, importantly, they will use it for many years to come for reasons such as access to a huge talent base of developers for potential hiring, the availability of frameworks and already written code, functions and applications. More than 95% of computers in companies and enterprises use Java, more than 90% of all computers in general use Java, and the number of mobile devices where this language is used exceeds 3 billion. Therefore, it is not surprising that almost any more or less large company anywhere in the world uses Java and hires specialists in this language.
Java + Android = Love
What made Java so popular in the first place? First of all, multiplatform and versatility. The flexibility of Java allows you to run programs written in this language on almost any device, including desktop PCs, mobile phones and even most other devices, from smart cars to household appliances, which are also getting smarter by leaps and bounds these days. Of course, the Java language owes much of its popularity and such a strong position in the modern world to mobile platforms, or more precisely to the Android operating system. Which is understandable: not a single application today can do without a mobile version, Android sits lounging on the throne of the king of mobile operating systems, and development for Android is simply unthinkable without Java (there is also Kotlin, but that’s a separate topic). So it turns out that most large modern companies, for which it is critical to have multifunctional mobile applications, simply cannot live without Java. Java's leadership position is confirmed by statistics. According to the TIOBE Index, Java is the most popular programming language in the world at 16%, ahead of C and Python.
Top companies and unicorn startups. How they use Java
The leadership position of Java and the ubiquity of this language in the modern business environment have been sorted out. It is precisely because of the versatility and prevalence of Java that it is sometimes difficult for beginners to navigate the areas of application of the language and how exactly large companies and emerging startups use Java, for what purposes it is most useful and why it is important. Therefore, we decided to prepare a short review of several successful and popular IT companies whose business is inextricably linked with Java and the opportunities that this language provides. Specifically in this article we will talk about several giants from the mass market segment - now these companies are known to almost everyone, and many simply cannot imagine their life without their services.
Uber
Uber is one of the canonical examples of a successful company whose business is built around a mobile application, which, in turn, is based on Java. What makes Uber (and similar services) so attractive and popular? The fact that the user can open the application and order the service almost instantly. The Uber app shows where the car is at a specific moment in time, where it is going and when, down to the minute, it will arrive at its destination. Uber even displays the license plate number, color and make of the car, as well as the driver's name, allowing the user to identify the desired vehicle almost instantly. The payment process is also simple and fast - it is automatically charged to your credit card. All this is possible thanks to Java. The realities of modern digital business force companies to create new mobile applications that will satisfy consumer demand for goods and services available 24/7 within a maximum of a couple of tens of minutes after ordering. To meet this demand, companies are turning to Java projects in an increasingly massive and active manner. It is largely thanks to the use of Java , as well as the constant improvement of the code, that users of the modern version of the Uber application have access to such a volume of various information (in the form of graphics and not only), as well as to a variety of functions and capabilities. For example, the application allows you to see the cost of a trip and track changes in tariffs depending on the time of day, weather and other factors. You can also choose cars of different comfort levels or share a taxi with other users if they are heading in the same direction. These functions require dozens, sometimes hundreds of processes running in the background, and the guarantor of the coordinated operation of these processes is, to a large extent, Java.
Netflix
Today, everyone's favorite video service processes no less than 2 billion requests for streaming content every day. All thanks to the Java-centered architecture. Netflix is the world's most popular online TV network (if you can call it that), and the service's operating model and its interface have become the standard. For a small monthly fee of about $10, Netflix users can watch as many movies and TV shows as they want, anytime, on any device. Java's scalability has played a key role in Netflix's success, allowing the company to grow its user base to 57 million in more than 50 countries. This audience watches more than 1 billion hours of video content every month. “The vast majority of services in our architecture are built on Java and the Java Virtual Machine [JVM],” said Andrew Glover, one of Netflix's developers. “We have thousands of Java processes running all the time, and as our platform grows, we don’t see any major infrastructure issues. We also use many open source tools that are based on Java, making it easy to monitor, update and scale our services.” “When a user opens Netflix, behind the scenes the system runs about a dozen different processes to authorize that person, figure out what device they're using, make sure the account is active, and look at their profile's recent activity. All of these processes are managed using Eureka , an open source tool based on Java,” said Glover.
Twitter
The world's most popular microblogging service, Twitter, appeared in ancient times, by the standards of the Internet industry, of course - in 2006, and in the first years of its existence it had huge problems with performance and stable operation amid the rapid growth of its user base. The service crashed so often that the screen with the image of a white whale that a user sees during Twitter outages became a meme. However, around the end of 2010, Twitter began to work much more stable, and in the last few years it has had excellent uptime indicators, so the dormant white whale began to be forgotten. Who should be thanked for such changes? Of course, Java. Robert Benson, Twitter's senior director of development, spoke about this during an interview. According to him, Twitter developers from the very beginning of the platform thought a lot about the architecture of the service and how to most efficiently process the huge number of requests received from users every second. And today Twitter has more than 200 million active users who leave more than 400 million tweets every day. After several years of analysis and searching for the best solution, Twitter engineers came up with the use of Java Virtual Machine, which allows the system to scale horizontally and cope with the load. Twitter developers have transferred most of the most critical systems for the company to services written in Java and Scala, which operate on the JVM. Therefore, Twitter now works quite stably around the world, and is even adapted to safely endure peak periods of high load that occur during high-profile events such as the World Cup finals or elections in the United States. And the system allows users to find out news about events that happened just a few minutes ago.
Priceline
For Priceline, one of the leaders in the online booking industry, Java is the key to efficiency and effectiveness. Using this language allows you to achieve flexibility, productivity, portability and reach a huge audience. Priceline is an application for booking hotels and apartments around the world. This service is slightly less popular and known in Europe than in the USA, where it is the leader. Priceline is part of Booking Holdings, which also includes a number of super popular booking services, namely KAYAK, Rentalcars, Booking, Opentable and Agoda. So the Java aspects listed below largely apply to these services as well. Despite the fact that from the user side the process of searching and booking hotels looks quite simple - just enter the desired destination and dates - behind the scenes of services such as Priceline there are complex systems with many simultaneous processes. A simple search query triggers a series of interactions and connections to different hotels, airlines, databases and reservation systems around the world. For example, searching for a hotel to book a room somewhere in New York creates up to 500 simultaneous requests to hotel systems and various intermediaries. Considering that thousands of users can search for hotels in the system at the same time, the main difficulty in the work of Priceline and other similar aggregators is managing this complex matrix of requests and connections that occur in real time. This is where the superhero called Java comes into play, allowing the service to quickly and efficiently retrieve information from databases around the world in response to queries. In Priceline's case, the company's dedication to Java is so strong that Michael Diliberto, chief operating officer of Priceline's North American division, once noted that the company views Java as a "way of life" and cannot imagine its existence without the language.
conclusions
As you can see from the above, without Java it is almost impossible for a number of well-known services to successfully operate, as well as for companies that make huge money from the popularity of these services. At least in the form we are used to seeing them. This means that if you look at all this from a global point of view, we can say that the entire modern world is impossible without Java. Judge for yourself: who now wants to catch a taxi not through a convenient app, but the old fashioned way, shouting loudly and waving his arms on the street; who will call each hotel in turn to find a free room if the application does it for you; and who can come up with a more convenient reason to lure the object of affection to your home than Netflix and chill. Services and applications that change our lives are written by Java developers. And this is just the beginning, as the opportunities for innovation are endless and the demand for scalability, flexibility and global reach is only growing.
What makes Uber (and similar services) so attractive and popular? The fact that the user can open the application and order the service almost instantly. The Uber app shows where the car is at a specific moment in time, where it is going and when, down to the minute, it will arrive at its destination. Uber even displays the license plate number, color and make of the car, as well as the driver's name, allowing the user to identify the desired vehicle almost instantly. The payment process is also simple and fast - it is automatically charged to your credit card. All this is possible thanks to Java. The realities of modern digital business force companies to create new mobile applications that will satisfy consumer demand for goods and services available 24/7 within a maximum of a couple of tens of minutes after ordering. To meet this demand, companies are turning to Java projects in an increasingly massive and active manner. It is largely thanks to the use of Java , as well as the constant improvement of the code, that users of the modern version of the Uber application have access to such a volume of various information (in the form of graphics and not only), as well as to a variety of functions and capabilities. For example, the application allows you to see the cost of a trip and track changes in tariffs depending on the time of day, weather and other factors. You can also choose cars of different comfort levels or share a taxi with other users if they are heading in the same direction. These functions require dozens, sometimes hundreds of processes running in the background, and the guarantor of the coordinated operation of these processes is, to a large extent, Java.
Netflix is the world's most popular online TV network (if you can call it that), and the service's operating model and its interface have become the standard. For a small monthly fee of about $10, Netflix users can watch as many movies and TV shows as they want, anytime, on any device. Java's scalability has played a key role in Netflix's success, allowing the company to grow its user base to 57 million in more than 50 countries. This audience watches more than 1 billion hours of video content every month. “The vast majority of services in our architecture are built on Java and the Java Virtual Machine [JVM],” said Andrew Glover, one of Netflix's developers. “We have thousands of Java processes running all the time, and as our platform grows, we don’t see any major infrastructure issues. We also use many open source tools that are based on Java, making it easy to monitor, update and scale our services.” “When a user opens Netflix, behind the scenes the system runs about a dozen different processes to authorize that person, figure out what device they're using, make sure the account is active, and look at their profile's recent activity. All of these processes are managed using Eureka , an open source tool based on Java,” said Glover.
However, around the end of 2010, Twitter began to work much more stable, and in the last few years it has had excellent uptime indicators, so the dormant white whale began to be forgotten. Who should be thanked for such changes? Of course, Java. Robert Benson, Twitter's senior director of development, spoke about this during an interview. According to him, Twitter developers from the very beginning of the platform thought a lot about the architecture of the service and how to most efficiently process the huge number of requests received from users every second. And today Twitter has more than 200 million active users who leave more than 400 million tweets every day. After several years of analysis and searching for the best solution, Twitter engineers came up with the use of Java Virtual Machine, which allows the system to scale horizontally and cope with the load. Twitter developers have transferred most of the most critical systems for the company to services written in Java and Scala, which operate on the JVM. Therefore, Twitter now works quite stably around the world, and is even adapted to safely endure peak periods of high load that occur during high-profile events such as the World Cup finals or elections in the United States. And the system allows users to find out news about events that happened just a few minutes ago.
Priceline is an application for booking hotels and apartments around the world. This service is slightly less popular and known in Europe than in the USA, where it is the leader. Priceline is part of Booking Holdings, which also includes a number of super popular booking services, namely KAYAK, Rentalcars, Booking, Opentable and Agoda. So the Java aspects listed below largely apply to these services as well. Despite the fact that from the user side the process of searching and booking hotels looks quite simple - just enter the desired destination and dates - behind the scenes of services such as Priceline there are complex systems with many simultaneous processes. A simple search query triggers a series of interactions and connections to different hotels, airlines, databases and reservation systems around the world. For example, searching for a hotel to book a room somewhere in New York creates up to 500 simultaneous requests to hotel systems and various intermediaries. Considering that thousands of users can search for hotels in the system at the same time, the main difficulty in the work of Priceline and other similar aggregators is managing this complex matrix of requests and connections that occur in real time. This is where the superhero called Java comes into play, allowing the service to quickly and efficiently retrieve information from databases around the world in response to queries. In Priceline's case, the company's dedication to Java is so strong that Michael Diliberto, chief operating officer of Priceline's North American division, once noted that the company views Java as a "way of life" and cannot imagine its existence without the language.
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