Regardless of having simply celebrated its 30 yr anniversary, Java remains to be going sturdy. Scroll by means of the record of different programming languages created within the 90s and also you gained’t discover many names you’d nonetheless acknowledge right this moment, but Java remains to be prevalent throughout the business.
TIOBE’s Programming Group index for June 2025 ranks Java because the fourth hottest programming language, Stack Overflow’s 2024 developer survey ranked it as seventh hottest, and IEEE Spectrum’s annual rating in 2024 positioned it within the quantity two spot.
Growth on Java first started in 1991 by James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, and Patrick Naughton, and its first public launch was on Could 23, 1995. In the course of the first 15 years of the language, it was maintained by Solar Microsystems, which was acquired by Oracle in 2010, the place it lives right this moment.
To know how Java has maintained its recognition over the a long time, Simon Ritter, CTO of the Java platform Azul, says you need to return to the philosophy Gosling had when the language was created. “He described it as a blue collar programming language, and what he meant by that was it was all about getting the job performed,” stated Ritter. “It wasn’t an instructional train by way of investigating how we might change programming languages specifically methods and use various things. It was about, I have to get a job performed. I wish to get it performed in probably the most environment friendly method. And that’s the way it took place, and that’s actually the philosophy that has adopted the language by means of these 30 years, and has had a huge impact on why the language has continued to be so profitable.”
One more reason why the language has been so profitable is that it continues to tug options from different languages to maintain it related, Ritter defined. For instance, Textual content Blocks was a characteristic borrowed from JavaScript, useful programming was borrowed from Scala, and sample matching is one thing that has been seen in lots of different programming languages.
“Different languages have come round they usually’ve added new issues, and folks have gone, ‘oh, I like that shiny new characteristic that’s been added to that language.’ And what Java has performed is claimed, ‘hmm, okay, let’s take a few of these concepts and produce these into the language,’” stated Ritter.
And naturally, the “write as soon as, run wherever” nature of Java has been a draw as properly, particularly as {hardware} advanced. Brian Fox, co-founder and CTO of Sonatype, the corporate behind the Maven Central repository, stated “in case you go all the way in which again and also you have a look at C and C++, we now have libraries and DLLs, however largely these issues needed to be recompiled on a regular basis for brand spanking new variations of {hardware} and new chips and issues like that. It created this case the place to ensure that any of those blocks to be reusable, anyone needed to always replace them.”
The Java Digital Machine (JVM) eradicated that difficulty and enabled a scenario the place you might create the Java JAR file as soon as and by no means have to return to replace it. “You could possibly focus your vitality on innovating that factor ahead versus simply always rebuilding it to make it related within the fashionable time,” he stated.
Ritter believes that the best legacy of Java is that just about any web site that you simply work together with most likely has Java working someplace, particularly on the server facet.
“The JVM is basically the ability behind that and its means to scale to a whole lot, hundreds, tens of millions of customers, and nonetheless ship the issues that folks want,” he stated.
OpenJDK
A big milestone in Java’s historical past was the push to make the language extra open.
“If we go proper again to the early days of Java’s historical past, it grew to become very fashionable, after which there have been lots of calls from folks to make it extra open, and Solar continued to keep up fairly strict management over it, in that they didn’t hand over the specification to an open requirements physique,” Ritter stated.
Nevertheless, Solar did acknowledge that there was a necessity for folks to offer enter on how the language ought to evolve, which led to the creation of the Java Group Course of.
A number of years later, in 2007, Solar launched the supply code of Java underneath the GNU GPL, resulting in the creation of OpenJDK.
Switching the discharge schedule allowed the language to enhance extra regularly
In 2017, after the discharge of Java 9, Oracle switched from releasing a brand new model of Java roughly each three years to releasing two new variations yearly. This, Ritter says, has allowed the language to enhance fairly quickly ever since, whereas nonetheless enhancing in a managed method so that folks don’t have radical adjustments.
In keeping with Fox, there was an inflection level between the discharge of Java 8 and 9, which is after they launched the module system and another revolutionary adjustments.
“It created slightly little bit of a fraction locally we nonetheless see, the place persons are struggling to replace their functions previous Java 8 due to the gorgeous important adjustments there,” he stated.
He recollects working with Oracle and pleading them to not do issues that will create a schism locally, like with Python 2 vs 3, and he believes they had been largely profitable at avoiding that.
“There was slightly little bit of a hurdle to recover from it, positively not like a significant fork locally the place each library needed to be recompiled within the new factor, otherwise you couldn’t use it,” stated Fox. “Apart from that, all the pieces feels largely incremental. I don’t assume there was another enormous watershed second, and I might assert that’s a very good factor. That’s why it continues to develop.”
Java EE turns into Jakarta EE
One other main change that occurred in 2017 was that Oracle donated Java EE—a set of specs for enterprise Java options—to the Eclipse Basis, the place it was renamed Jakarta EE.
“From our perspective, Java is continuous to evolve proper earlier than our eyes, and it’s within the midst of a renaissance of kinds,” stated Tanja Obradovic, senior director of Java Applications for the Eclipse Basis. “Our neighborhood isn’t simply sustaining Java; it’s actively modernizing it, and builders proceed to show to it for all the pieces from cloud-native companies to AI.”
In keeping with Obradovic, Jakarta EE is an instance of how Java has advanced to help open-source builders and their wants. The following launch will embody deeper cloud native integration refinements whereas persevering with to deprecate outdated applied sciences. This helps to refine the platform to help applied sciences like microservices and event-driven architectures.
“All of that is doable as a result of dedication of the open supply neighborhood. That presence is what has contributed to and even prolonged its longevity as a language,” she stated.
Apache Maven
Apache Maven is a construct automation and dependency administration device for Java, and Fox stated it’s important in Java’s historical past as a result of it made it very easy to construct software program with Java.
“It was at all times deeply irritating to me as an skilled Java programmer, how exhausting it was to attempt to make adjustments to issues that we had been utilizing daily. Like, our IDE was Eclipse, and it was written in Java, and it’s like, I actually want it will do that factor, and I ought to have the ability to take 20 minutes and simply change that code, nevertheless it was inconceivable to get it to construct. After which when Maven got here alongside, it was like, oh yeah, it’s tremendous straightforward to construct this code,” he stated.
Different languages which have adopted have adopted related techniques for dependency administration, just like the npm package deal supervisor for JavaScript, pip for Python, and Nuget for .NET.
“I really feel like these early issues that we did with Java actually helped open supply, not simply inside Java, however made all the pieces that got here after it have the identical primary form that enabled the huge explosion that we’re seeing now,” stated Fox.
