Java retains its popularity in a changing landscape

The Java programming language dates back to 1996, released by Sun Microsystems as a way of developing multimedia applications in a portable and interactive way.

That Java is still immensely popular almost 30 years on suggests that it must have got something right. New Relic's 2023 State of the Java Ecosystem report takes an in-depth look at the use of one of the most popular programming languages.

Every two or three years a Java release gets designated as long-term support (LTS) and receives only quarterly stability, security, and performance updates, not new features. More than 56 percent of applications are now using Java 11 in production (up from 48 percent in 2022 and 11 percent in 2020). Java 8 is a close second with nearly 33 percent of applications using it in production (down from 46 percent in 2022).

While Java 11 has held the top spot for two years in a row, the adoption rate of Java 17 is catching up fast. More than nine percent of applications are now using Java 17 in production (up from less than one percent in 2022), representing a 430 percent growth rate in one year.

Amazon has overtaken Oracle as the most popular Java Development Kit (JDK) vendor. In 2020, Oracle had roughly 75 percent of the Java market. While Oracle retained the top spot in 2022 with 34 percent, it slipped to 28 percent in 2023. Amazon has increased dramatically to 31 percent of the market (up from 2.18 percent in 2020 and 22 percent in 2022).

There's also been a shift to containers, with 70 percent of Java applications reporting to New Relic doing so from a container. The use of those containers has changed too, with more of them employing multi-core settings

You can read the full report on the New Relic site.

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