The new year has just begun, everyone is slowly moving away from the holidays and remembering that they need to work. The beginning of January is the best time to start planning your professional (and personal too) life for the coming year. When it comes to Java and programming in general, planning and adapting to change play a huge role here, because it allows you to prepare in advance for technology transformations and new trends. This is what we will talk about today - about forecasts, trends and expectations around and around Java coding and programming in general. And let's start by listing several global trends that, according to many experts, will fully manifest themselves this year.
Active coding automation
This is part of the global IT trend for automation, which will also affect programming. By 2020, Forrester, a research firm, predicts that software robots will replace humans in performing routine tasks that are often poorly given to live programmers. Many programming experts agree with Forrester's forecast, suggesting that in 2020 more and more routine labor-intensive tasks will be automated. “High-growth companies and services need a faster and more streamlined workflow that allows updates and fixes to be pushed into production faster and handle issues as soon as they arise. That's why leading companies and teams are moving towards the full implementation of CI/CD practices [CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Delivery],” said Lukas Eder, Java expert and founder and CEO of Data Geekery. According to experts, despite the fact that the trend towards automation in programming has been going on for more than a year, It is in 2020 that a noticeable increase in the role of automation in the life cycle of creating and delivering software is expected. “One of the main areas in which automation is already being applied in a very active way is Root Cause Analysis. Companies are realizing that the cycle does not end with the deployment of code to production, and in 2020 monitoring will become an integral part of the CI / CD cycle, and automatic deployment requires more advanced monitoring. After all, you should know when new bugs appear in the release, without relying on user reports, and have all the information you need to fix them,” Eder added. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account. “One of the main areas in which automation is already being applied in a very active way is Root Cause Analysis. Companies are realizing that the cycle does not end with the deployment of code to production, and in 2020 monitoring will become an integral part of the CI / CD cycle, and automatic deployment requires more advanced monitoring. After all, you should know when new bugs appear in the release, without relying on user reports, and have all the information necessary to fix them,” Eder added. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account. “One of the main areas in which automation is already being applied in a very active way is Root Cause Analysis. Companies are realizing that the cycle does not end with the deployment of code to production, and in 2020 monitoring will become an integral part of the CI / CD cycle, and automatic deployment requires more advanced monitoring. After all, you should know when new bugs appear in the release, without relying on user reports, and have all the information necessary to fix them,” Eder added. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account. Companies are realizing that the cycle does not end with the deployment of code to production, and in 2020 monitoring will become an integral part of the CI / CD cycle, and automatic deployment requires more advanced monitoring. After all, you should know when new bugs appear in the release, without relying on user reports, and have all the information necessary to fix them,” Eder added. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account. Companies are realizing that the cycle does not end with the deployment of code to production, and in 2020 monitoring will become an integral part of the CI / CD cycle, and automatic deployment requires more advanced monitoring. After all, you should know when new bugs appear in the release, without relying on user reports, and have all the information necessary to fix them,” Eder added. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account. without relying on user reports and have all the information needed to fix them,” added Eder. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account. without relying on user reports and have all the information needed to fix them,” added Eder. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Another trend that is inextricably linked with automation and does not lag behind in terms of the rate of distribution is artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the fact that AI technologies have been considered a “hot” topic for more than a year, their popularity continues to grow. Back in 2018, research firm Gartner predicted that by 2020, AI-based technologies would be present in almost every new software product. So now is the time to delve into this most promising and very extensive topic in order to have an advantage in the eyes of employers over other specialists in programming and not only. In the field of development, various elements of AI are used, including machine learning, data mining, neural networks, and much more. All of these technologies can and in the near future will undoubtedly be used to help people create more convenient and effective software products. With the spread and popularization, technologies related to AI are becoming more accessible. For example, now everyone has access to a whole set of open libraries with machine learning algorithms that can be implemented quickly enough even without deep knowledge in this area. Among the most popular Java machine learning libraries are Deeplearning4J (DL4J), Neuroph and BIG Data Project. which can be implemented quickly enough even without deep knowledge in this area. Among the most popular Java machine learning libraries are Deeplearning4J (DL4J), Neuroph and BIG Data Project. which can be implemented quickly enough even without deep knowledge in this area. Among the most popular Java machine learning libraries are Deeplearning4J (DL4J), Neuroph and BIG Data Project.
Accelerating Innovation
The above trends, such as automation and machine learning, coupled with the trend of accelerating new releases that has been observed in recent years, brings us to another common prediction for 2020: bringing innovation to life in code, be it new features or original solving standard problems will be accelerated. First of all, this will of course happen through automation. By shifting many routine tasks onto the shoulders of the computer, developers will be able to devote more time to creating new features and improving the usability of their product, instead of wasting it on finding problems, identifying their causes and trying to fix errors. That is why many experts believe that innovation, or rather readiness for it, will be one of the important trends in the Java programming environment and beyond.
Moving from Reactive to Proactive
The general focus on acceleration and innovation creates another trend: the transition from a reactive approach to a proactive one. In practice, this means that you find and solve problems even before the user discovers its existence. “This can be done with a variety of monitoring, debugging, APM [Agile project management] and log management tools, depending on your requirements and the elements you want to track and process. There are many tools available to help you monitor and analyze your code, application, and servers. There are too many of them, which is why it is important to understand what you are looking for and what exactly you want to track and analyze,” says Steve Rogers, director of software development at Viator, “In the past, troubleshooting could take us whole days, creating a lot of hassle. But in the end, we were able to solve this problem with the help of new tools, and now we can spend more time working on new features and other improvements to our products. Whichever of the currently available tools you choose, remember that the tool should work for you, helping you find answers to questions that allow you to solve problems, and not send you wildly chasing errors through the logs,” advises Rogers .
Reliability trend
Increasing focus on software reliability and uptime is another global trend for 2020. With the automation and acceleration of the release of new releases and features, the problem of reliability and debugging of any product becomes especially acute. This forces companies to adapt, giving more time in the development cycle to the reliability of the software product. “In 2020, we need to be more agile. With the move towards workflow automation, reliability has become more important. At Intuit, we use what we call the Continuous Reliability approach. It allows us to control the availability and quality of our software products. In particular, we have achieved this through the use of OverOps [OverOps is a solution for detecting errors in applications in Java, Scala, Clojure and Groovy] in a variety of environments, including QA, pre-production, and staging. With OverOps, the team is able to detect errors before they affect the user, which increases the reliability of the application and provides the best user experience,” said Sumit Nagal, Principal Quality Engineer at Intuit.
Let them talk. Live speech of experts about Java in 2020
Well, let's continue with direct quotes from Java experts about what they expect and what forecasts they can give for 2020.
“Reactive programming will shape Java data access strategies, opening the door to a new class of applications.”
“The Java ecosystem has been in active development for over 20 years, and 2020 will be no exception. Personally, I'm looking forward to Hibernate 6. And now that R2DBC (Reactive Relational Database Connectivity) has reached version 1.0, I'm looking forward to how reactive programming will shape Java data access strategies, opening the door to a new class of data-intensive applications. ”, said Vlad Mihalcea, Java expert and author of High-Performance Java Persistence.
“It is increasingly important to see and understand general development trends and how they affect Java applications.”
“Of course, in 2020 we will get Java 14 and Java 15. However, moving away from Java, the programming language, it is increasingly important to see and understand the general trends in development, in particular those related to deployment, launch and debugging (for example, in the cloud), as well as security. As clouds and microservices become the main choice for implementation, it is important for developers to understand how this affects Java applications in the long term,” said Trisha Gee, Java expert at JetBrains.
“Transition to other ways of working with databases.”
“From 2020, I expect to move to other ways of working with databases. In 2016, I started lecturing on SQL and other structured query languages. There is a movement in this direction, and we see more and more tools and frameworks for which databases are not, so to speak, “second-class citizens,” said Michael Simons, a developer at Neo4j.
“Everyday Java code, as well as the code you find in libraries, will look a little different than in previous years.”
“With new language options such as “Pattern Matching for instanceof”, “Switch Expressions” and “Text-Blocks”, everyday Java code, as well as the code you find in libraries, will look a little different than in previous years . This will certainly be a problem for many traditional Java developers. Java will also add to the appeal with improved support for pre-compilation and native image generation for serverless environments,” said Thomas Darimont, Java developer at codecentric AG.
“In 2020, a lot will happen with Graal and framework support.”
“In terms of the Java language itself, in 2020 we expect two more versions, 14 and 15. Both versions will again contain many new features that will help us in our development. Since none of these versions are LTS, we don't expect JDK 17 to arrive before 2021. In addition, there will be a lot going on with Graal and framework support. It is in this area that I expect to move forward particularly quickly so that I will not hesitate to switch to Graal,” Michael Vitz, Senior Consultant at innoQ Deutschland GmbH, shared his expectations.
When it comes to Java and programming in general, planning and adapting to change play a huge role here, because it allows you to prepare in advance for technology transformations and new trends. This is what we will talk about today - about forecasts, trends and expectations around and around Java coding and programming in general. And let's start by listing several global trends that, according to many experts, will fully manifest themselves this year.
Many programming experts agree with Forrester's forecast, suggesting that in 2020 more and more routine labor-intensive tasks will be automated. “High-growth companies and services need a faster and more streamlined workflow that allows updates and fixes to be pushed into production faster and handle issues as soon as they arise. That's why leading companies and teams are moving towards the full implementation of CI/CD practices [CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Delivery],” said Lukas Eder, Java expert and founder and CEO of Data Geekery. According to experts, despite the fact that the trend towards automation in programming has been going on for more than a year, It is in 2020 that a noticeable increase in the role of automation in the life cycle of creating and delivering software is expected. “One of the main areas in which automation is already being applied in a very active way is Root Cause Analysis. Companies are realizing that the cycle does not end with the deployment of code to production, and in 2020 monitoring will become an integral part of the CI / CD cycle, and automatic deployment requires more advanced monitoring. After all, you should know when new bugs appear in the release, without relying on user reports, and have all the information you need to fix them,” Eder added. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account. “One of the main areas in which automation is already being applied in a very active way is Root Cause Analysis. Companies are realizing that the cycle does not end with the deployment of code to production, and in 2020 monitoring will become an integral part of the CI / CD cycle, and automatic deployment requires more advanced monitoring. After all, you should know when new bugs appear in the release, without relying on user reports, and have all the information necessary to fix them,” Eder added. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account. “One of the main areas in which automation is already being applied in a very active way is Root Cause Analysis. Companies are realizing that the cycle does not end with the deployment of code to production, and in 2020 monitoring will become an integral part of the CI / CD cycle, and automatic deployment requires more advanced monitoring. After all, you should know when new bugs appear in the release, without relying on user reports, and have all the information necessary to fix them,” Eder added. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account. Companies are realizing that the cycle does not end with the deployment of code to production, and in 2020 monitoring will become an integral part of the CI / CD cycle, and automatic deployment requires more advanced monitoring. After all, you should know when new bugs appear in the release, without relying on user reports, and have all the information necessary to fix them,” Eder added. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account. Companies are realizing that the cycle does not end with the deployment of code to production, and in 2020 monitoring will become an integral part of the CI / CD cycle, and automatic deployment requires more advanced monitoring. After all, you should know when new bugs appear in the release, without relying on user reports, and have all the information necessary to fix them,” Eder added. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account. without relying on user reports and have all the information needed to fix them,” added Eder. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account. without relying on user reports and have all the information needed to fix them,” added Eder. Many large companies, including Intuit, Zynga, TripAdvisor, Comcast and others, have been actively introducing automation into their workflows for a long time, and Java programmers should take this trend into account.
“In the past, troubleshooting could take us whole days, creating a lot of hassle. But in the end, we were able to solve this problem with the help of new tools, and now we can spend more time working on new features and other improvements to our products. Whichever of the currently available tools you choose, remember that the tool should work for you, helping you find answers to questions that allow you to solve problems, and not send you wildly chasing errors through the logs,” advises Rogers .
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