Regardless of having simply celebrated its 30 yr anniversary, Java continues to be going sturdy. Scroll by means of the listing of different programming languages created within the 90s and also you gained’t discover many names you’d nonetheless acknowledge as we speak, but Java continues to be prevalent throughout the business.
TIOBE’s Programming Neighborhood 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.
Improvement on Java first started in 1991 by James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, and Patrick Naughton, and its first public launch was on Might 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 as we speak.
To grasp how Java has maintained its reputation over the many years, Simon Ritter, CTO of the Java platform Azul, says it’s a must 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 completed,” mentioned Ritter. “It wasn’t a tutorial train when it comes to investigating how we might change programming languages particularly methods and use various things. It was about, I must get a job completed. I need to get it completed in probably the most environment friendly approach. And that’s the way it happened, and that’s actually the philosophy that has adopted the language by means of these 30 years, and has had a big effect 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 drag options from different languages to maintain it related, Ritter defined. For instance, Textual content Blocks was a function borrowed from JavaScript, purposeful 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 other people have gone, ‘oh, I like that shiny new function that’s been added to that language.’ And what Java has completed is alleged, ‘hmm, okay, let’s take a few of these concepts and convey these into the language,’” mentioned Ritter.
And naturally, the “write as soon as, run wherever” nature of Java has been a draw as properly, particularly as {hardware} developed. Brian Fox, co-founder and CTO of Sonatype, the corporate behind the Maven Central repository, mentioned “for those who go all the way in which again and also you take a look at C and C++, we have now 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 example the place to ensure that any of those blocks to be reusable, anyone needed to consistently replace them.”
The Java Digital Machine (JVM) eradicated that concern and enabled a state of affairs the place you would create the Java JAR file as soon as and by no means have to return to replace it. “You might focus your power on innovating that factor ahead versus simply consistently rebuilding it to make it related within the trendy time,” he mentioned.
Ritter believes that the best legacy of Java is that nearly any web site that you simply work together with in all probability has Java working someplace, particularly on the server aspect.
“The JVM is absolutely the ability behind that and its potential to scale to lots of, hundreds, thousands and thousands of customers, and nonetheless ship the issues that folks want,” he mentioned.
OpenJDK
A major 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 turned highly regarded, after which there have been lots of calls from individuals to make it extra open, and Solar continued to take care of fairly strict management over it, in that they didn’t hand over the specification to an open requirements physique,” Ritter mentioned.
Nevertheless, Solar did acknowledge that there was a necessity for individuals to supply enter on how the language ought to evolve, which led to the creation of the Java Neighborhood Course of.
A number of years later, in 2007, Solar launched the supply code of Java beneath the GNU GPL, resulting in the creation of OpenJDK.
Switching the discharge schedule allowed the language to enhance extra steadily
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 approach so that folks don’t have radical adjustments.
In line 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 purposes previous Java 8 due to the gorgeous vital adjustments there,” he mentioned.
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 serious fork locally the place each library needed to be recompiled within the new factor, otherwise you couldn’t use it,” mentioned Fox. “Apart from that, every little thing feels largely incremental. I don’t suppose there was another big watershed second, and I’d assert that’s an excellent 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 constant to evolve proper earlier than our eyes, and it’s within the midst of a renaissance of types,” mentioned 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 every little thing from cloud-native companies to AI.”
In line with Obradovic, Jakarta EE is an instance of how Java has developed to help open-source builders and their wants. The subsequent 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 potential because of the dedication of the open supply neighborhood. That presence is what has contributed to and even prolonged its longevity as a language,” she mentioned.
Apache Maven
Apache Maven is a construct automation and dependency administration device for Java, and Fox mentioned it’s vital 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 laborious 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 could do that factor, and I ought to have the ability to take 20 minutes and simply change that code, but it surely was unattainable to get it to construct. After which when Maven got here alongside, it was like, oh yeah, it’s tremendous simple to construct this code,” he mentioned.
Different languages which have adopted have adopted related techniques for dependency administration, just like the npm bundle 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 every little thing that got here after it have the identical fundamental form that enabled the large explosion that we’re seeing now,” mentioned Fox.
