In addition to the coronavirus and the economic crisis, there were also good events in 2020. For example, the release of new versions of Java. Additionally, Java is still the most popular development language in the world. Summing up 2020, let's remember what happened to the programming language throughout the year.
Java Updates: Versions 14 and 15
In the past year, two Java updates were released: 14 and 15. Among the innovations in the 14th version are experimental support for the record keyword, support for pattern matching in the "instanceof" operator, more user-friendly NullPointerExceptions, an expanded “preview” of text blocks, updated switch functionality default. “Java 14 is further evidence of the benefits of a six-month update cycle: developers are getting access to features they would otherwise have waited years for,” said George Saab , Oracle vice president of Java platform engineering. According to Saab, JDK 14 not only contains improvements that will increase developer productivity. This release also includes for the first time important content from projects such as Project Panama - an expanded external memory access interface and further improvements from Project Amber - Pattern Matching and Records." One of the key innovations in Java 14 is “Records”. In fact, we have before us a new type that was developed during the Valhalla project . Records are similar to enumerations and allow you to simplify your code. Essentially, they replace classes that have state but no behavior. JDK 14 includes a preview of the Foreign-Memory Access API, which allows Java applications to securely and efficiently access memory regions outside the JVM heap using the new MemorySegment, MemoryAddress, and MemoryLayout abstractions. The 15th version includes such innovations as a digital signature algorithm based on the Edwards curve, hidden classes, as well as the final versions of features that were previously evaluation: text blocks and the ZGC garbage collector. Sealed classes were added as a preview feature for the first time in Java 15; Also re-enabled pattern matching for the instanceof operator and records as a preview. To summarize, we can say that thanks to updates every six months, Java has time to develop and does not lag behind other development languages. By the way, this year, on the eve of the release of version 14, a complete review of Java versions (from 8 to 13) was published on JavaRush. We recommend reading.
Java in ratings: still popular
Java continues to be the world's most popular primary programming language , according to research from JetBrains. It is used by about 5.2 million developers. No less optimistic is the data from the IDC report “Java Turns 25” : more than 9 million developers worldwide use Java. “Today, there are 51 billion Java virtual machines (JVMs) deployed and actively used worldwide, making Java the preferred choice for developing modern enterprise applications, including analytics, microservices, data management, social services, big data, DevOps, mobile applications, continuous development tools and chatbots,” says Manish Gupta, vice president of global marketing for Java. In December 2020, Java became the second most popular language in the world, according to the TIOBE index , which evaluates the popularity of programming languages. The ratings explain the popularity of Java among employers by the large number of applications and services written in this language. In the ranking of the job search site Dice.com, the Java language was in second place , only SQL could overtake it. Let's not forget about the results of the annual study of the Stack OverFlow developer community: Java in 2020 took 5th place among the most popular development languages. As we can see, if Java did not rise in popularity ratings in 2020, at least it did not decline.
Where and for what was Java used?
By far the largest number of Java developers live in Asia, where about 2.5 million programmers use Java as their primary language, according to JetBrains. Java is used most in China and South Korea - about 51% and 50% of developers, respectively. Java is actively used in India, Germany, Spain and Brazil. Belarus is in the middle of this list of countries, with 33% of developers. But Russia and Ukraine are at the bottom of the list with 25% and 21% of programmers, respectively. The reasons why Java may be popular in the first 6 countries of the list are the free use of this programming language, government support and open source code, JetBrains clarifies . Java 8 remains the most favorite version among developers. It is preferred by three quarters of Java developers. At the same time, the popularity of Java 11 is growing. Compared to last year, the share of users of this version increased by 10%. The relatively new Java 12 and Java 13 are also quickly finding their audience: each of them is used by 10% or more. Among Java frameworks, Spring Boot is the leader - it was chosen by 61% of developers. In second and third places are Spring MVC (42%) and JSF (6%), respectively. In 2020, Java was most often used to write websites (36%). In second place is the development of utilities (25%), in third place is the development of system software (19%).
Java in the news
What else was happening with Java in 2020? We have collected a selection of important news for Java development.
The Java language is one of the three most in-demand technical skills in remote work.
The American job search service Dice has compiled a list of technical skills, programming languages and tools that are most in demand among employers of remote work specialists. According to the results of the last two months, the leader was the SQL language, followed by Project Management and the Java language. The authors of the study note that organizations related to the healthcare and education sectors were the most active in hiring remote work during the pandemic.
Snowflake has released a new environment for Java development.
Snowflake, a provider of cloud storage and data management, presented a test version of the new Snowpark development environment. It supports multiple programming languages, including Java, Scala and Python. Snowpark includes a set of APIs that ensure that code written in the environment interacts optimally with the main Snowflake engine. The IDE is complemented by new support for serverless tasks in Snowflake Data Cloud.
Red Hat introduced the Quarkus Java framework for the cloud.
As the creators note , Quarkus allows you to effectively use Java on Kubernetes platforms and bridges the gap between traditional Java applications and cloud-native environments. Support for Quarkus as a runtime environment allows you to effectively use Java to solve current problems - when developing cloud-based applications, as well as implementing new models of software systems, such as microservices, containers and serverless computing.
The GraalVM virtual machine has been updated to version 20.3
Oracle released the last release of this year, GraalVM, a Java virtual machine and JDK based on HotSpot/OpenJDK. This is the first Long Term Support (LTS) release for GraalVM Enterprise. The list of updates in GraalVM 20.3 is worth noting the following: the compiler has improved heuristics, resulting in a 40% increase in performance; improved code generation for initializing newly allocated arrays; Code duplication optimization has been expanded (in the GraalVM Enterprise version). This is how the past year has been for Java. What do you consider the main event for the Java community in 2020?
Java is used most in China and South Korea - about 51% and 50% of developers, respectively. Java is actively used in India, Germany, Spain and Brazil. Belarus is in the middle of this list of countries, with 33% of developers. But Russia and Ukraine are at the bottom of the list with 25% and 21% of programmers, respectively. The reasons why Java may be popular in the first 6 countries of the list are the free use of this programming language, government support and open source code, JetBrains clarifies . Java 8 remains the most favorite version among developers. It is preferred by three quarters of Java developers. At the same time, the popularity of Java 11 is growing. Compared to last year, the share of users of this version increased by 10%. The relatively new Java 12 and Java 13 are also quickly finding their audience: each of them is used by 10% or more. Among Java frameworks, Spring Boot is the leader - it was chosen by 61% of developers. In second and third places are Spring MVC (42%) and JSF (6%), respectively. In 2020, Java was most often used to write websites (36%). In second place is the development of utilities (25%), in third place is the development of system software (19%).
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