Java in 2021: updates 16 and 17, popularity in Asia and stability in rankings

It’s the end of December, which means it’s time to take stock. After all, there have been a lot of changes in the world of Java development during this year. In this text we have collected the main ones.

Java Updates: 16 and 17

The Java language receives an update every six months. As expected, two releases were released in 2021 - Java 16 and Java 17 . The Java 16 release includes 17 improvements. New in version 16: a new packaging tool for delivering standalone Java applications, improved memory management, additional incubation and preview features, improvements to eliminate future-proof code, and new ports to the JDK for Alpine Linux and other Linux distributions . Java 16 completed pattern matching for instanceof and Record, language improvements first introduced in Java 14. Java 17, released in September 2021 , included 14 changes. Most of the changes concern increasing the performance of the language and the platform as a whole. The creators also removed many outdated components and technologies that had become irrelevant due to lack of support from third-party software. Key changes include improved support for sealed classes and interfaces, which block the ability of objects and other classes to inherit properties from these components ( JEP 409 ). It is worth noting the improved blocking of access to the internal APIs of the JDK platform, as well as improved performance through the use of Vector API technology, the removal of experimental AOT and JIT compilers, and the use of the Metal framework for rendering on Apple devices. Commercial builds of Oracle's JDK 17 for Windows and other platforms are available on the developer's website. A free, open source version of OpenJDK 17 with quarterly updates is available for download from this link . JDK 17 has long term support (LTS) for 8 years. The next LTS Java release will be in 2023 with Java 21. This will change the LTS release frequency from three years to two years.

Changes in the Java Ecosystem: Java EE Revival and Microsoft Support

What else was happening with Java in 2021? For example, at the beginning of April 2021, a long-term trial between Oracle and Google ended. The US Supreme Court sided with Google in a dispute with Oracle over the illegal use of the Java language API. The series of lawsuits dragged on for 11 years, with various authorities recognizing victory either for Google or for Oracle. Over the years, the amount Google could pay out if it lost has grown from an initial $6.1 billion to $9.3 billion. Among the changes in 2021, it is worth remembering the participation of Microsoft. In April, the company published experimental builds of its own OpenJDK distribution for Windows, Linux and macOS, which supports the operation of a number of systems in the corporation's infrastructure. Anyone can download and install a set of tools for developing and running applications in the popular Java programming language for free. In September, at the same time as the release of Java 17, a study came out that Java EE was experiencing a renaissance. According to the report, Jakarta EE was the second most popular cloud platform, used by 47% of developers surveyed. “The 2021 Jakarta EE Developer Survey shows usage of Jakarta EE across the board and is another indication that it is the right platform for cloud-based Java innovation,” said Melissa Modjeski, vice president of application platform and integrations at IBM.

Java in ratings: chosen more often than Python

One of the main conclusions of the annual JetBrains study is that the Java programming language, although losing ground slightly, is still more popular than Python as the main language (32% versus 29% of respondents). According to the RedMonk company chart , at the end of June 2021, the Java programming language rose in the ranking from third to second place. It now shares second position with Python. The first place in the RedMonk ranking is occupied by the JavaScript language. But in the TIOBE programming language ranking as of December 2021, Java dropped from second to third place in popularity. In the annual Stack Overflow community survey, Java, like last year, took fifth place . As you can see, the popularity of Java is stable, although it has dropped by several positions. This language is still relevant for development.

What happened to Java versions?

As in 2020, Java 8 is still the leading version of this programming language. It is also interesting that since 2019, Java 11 has shown steady growth of about 10 percentage points annually. In numbers, it looks like this: 72% of developers who use Java prefer Java 8, and 42% prefer Java 11, according to a JetBrains study. A survey conducted by the Snyk community also showed that developers had begun to move from Java 8 to Java 11, the latest LTS release preceding Java 17. Previous reports from the Java community showed that developers were primarily using Java 8. According to the survey, 61.5% of respondents were using Java 11 in projects, while 12% were using the latest version of Java (Java 15 at the time). The shares of Java 12 and Java 13 have decreased by about three times since 2020, while the newer Java 14 and Java 15 have already gained an audience despite being relatively new.

Where and for what was Java used?

As in 2020, Java is most commonly used in South Korea, China, and Germany. Java's share in South Korea is 55%, in China - 47%, and in Germany - 33%. In Belarus, 26% of developers prefer Java, in Ukraine - 20%, in Russia - 18%. This is slightly less than in 2020. Most often, Java was used to develop websites (39%), less often - to create utilities (26%) and system software (19%). Java usage for websites and IT infrastructure has grown marginally between 2020 and 2021, while Java has seen less use for business analytics, data science, and machine learning. Among Java frameworks, Spring Boot is the leader (it is chosen by 65% ​​of programmers). The Spring MVC framework is in second place with 42% of developers. This is how 2021 went for the world of Java development. What do you think was the main event for the Java community this past year?