According to new research, companies plan to increase hiring of Java developers in 2024 and beyond, and investment in development tools is also expected to increase.
He Java Developer Productivity Report Perforce surveyed 440 people, mostly Java developers, architects, and team leaders in 72 countries.
Perforce said the results showed that investment in talent will increase significantly, with almost two-thirds (60%) of respondents planning to add additional developers over the next year.
Budgets for development tools also appear to be increasing despite economic headwinds, the report notes. Nearly half (42%) said their company plans to increase its tooling budget and 31% said their annual tooling budget (per developer) was $500 or more, marking an increase compared to the previous year.
However, only 22% of respondents said they had that much to spend, while only 15% said they would spend more than $1,000 on development tools.
“Java is here to stay,” said Rod Cope, CTO of Perforce. “These investments in tools and talent are a testament to Java's role as the stable backbone of enterprise applications.”
Barry Cranford and Marcin Kruglik of the London Java Community group echoed the sentiment around Java's continued popularity, adding that it will be “relevant for many years to come.”
“It is popular language used by many companies,” they said. ITPro.
“There are many new languages that are hotter than Java, but Java is catching up and adding new features every six months, while offering almost 30 years of experience and stability, which is priceless for businesses.
“From a hiring point of view, we still see many companies hiring Java developers in London and within the community.”
Java 21 Adoption Expected to Increase
As for the versions of Java that developers use most frequently, there was something of a split. While 11% of respondents said they had already upgraded to Java 21, which was released in September 2023, 24% of respondents said they were using Java 8 and 18% were using Java 11.
Perforce said it expects Java 21 adoption to increase as Oracle accelerates the frequency of long-term support JDK releases, from every three years to every two years. This may be a factor in Oracle Java gaining more ground against generic versions of OpenJDK compared to 2023, he said.
“The burden of updating JDKs used to be very large due to the large feature sets that were released with each subsequent version,” the report said. “Today, many companies realize that it is much easier to maintain support for the latest version of Java due to a smaller set of features introduced with each version.
“The bottom line is that long-term support and security go hand in hand, and long-term support ensures patches and other improvements to address new security threats and protect your enterprise application.”
Respondents were surveyed about which Java IDE they were using. IntelliJ IDEA topped the charts with 41% of respondents, as it has for the past three years.
Eclipse came in second, used by 23%, followed by Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VSCode). The vast majority (84%) of IntelliJ IDEA users said they also used another IDE in their Java development practice, with VSCode being the most common choice.
The report says other parts of respondents' Java technology stacks remain stable year over year. More than a third (36%) of respondents said they use Tomcat as an application server for their primary application, followed by JBoss/Wildfly (15%), WebLogic (12%), WebSphere (10%), Jetty (10%). ) and Glassfish/Payara (8%)
Perforce found that while many respondents use microservices, there was some surprise about the number of microservices respondents reported using in their applications: 18% use between 11 and 20 microservices and 23% use more than 21 microservices.
Looking at previous data, Perforce described the number of respondents using 11 or more microservices as “skyrocketing” from 16% in 2021 to 41% in 2024.
“This data also suggests an increase in microservices as applications age. Enthusiasm for implementing microservices is often high, but companies find implementation difficult as they slide into mini- or macroservices without realizing it, or make a conscious decision to abandon microservices altogether,” the report says.
What do Java developers want?
Java developers were asked what they would do with 10% more development time. Sensible answers included adding features (26%) and improving test coverage (18%), but written answers also included “get coffee” and “eliminate technical debt.”
One way to get that extra time could be by finding new tools and workflows to optimize development strategies. While 43% of respondents revealed that researching and implementing tools depends on individual efforts, nearly as many (42%) said their organizations use productivity teams to research options to increase productivity.
“These teams research solutions and test workflows so developers can focus on writing code and pay dividends as development environments become increasingly complex,” Cope said, adding that he expects the number of these teams is fired.
According to Stack Overflow's 2023 developer survey, Java is the seventh most popular programming language overall and the fifth most popular programming language among students.
Tiobe's list of the most popular programming languages currently places Java at number four (behind Python, C, and C++).
A Java developer in the UK can expect an average salary of around £61,000 according to Indeed.com, but analysis by recruitment firm Reed shows salaries can reach up to £86,000.
