During the last couple of months we held an online survey to get some insights of the Java ecosystem. As this is the second time we do this survey, we can compare the results. Make sure to have a look at our previous blog post on the results of 2022: https://www.continuum.be/blog/the-java-ecosystem-2022-survey-results/
This year we had a lower attendance compared to last year. We assume this is also partially because we wanted to ask a lot of the same questions in order to make a comparison with the questions from the year before. A bit as we assumed, no big changes happened during the last year. However, we did notice a couple of interesting things popping up on the radar. Continue reading if you want to learn more …
DEMOGRAPHY
Most people that filled in the survey, are in their thirties. They are still – by far – the biggest contributors to this survey. This year however, the number of people who voted between 40 and 49 are almost the same as between 25 – 29.
Most respondents are working for Belgian clients.
In which country is the client located you are creating solutions for?
The majority of our respondents are males.
What programming languages are we using and are we longing for
Comparing the most used languages Java is still by far the most used language, however we see a growth in the other languages. This is a trend we also have been noticing in the market, non-Java languages are being used more and more (for backend) development.
As Typescript and Javascript are still popular, we assume developers are still working both in back-end and front-end. This also confirms what we see our own consultants doing at our clients. Off-course each with their expertise in a certain domain.
Which (max 3) programming languages have you used intensively during the 12 previous months?
If we compare what languages people would like to be using in the near future, we see that Kotlin and Python are still the main languages. However Rust and Go have been gaining traction as well compared to the 2022 survey. Overall, the survey results indicate a strong interest in modern and versatile languages, which are known for their performance, safety, and developer-friendliness. The choice of programming language often depends on the specific needs and objectives of individual developers or organizations.
Within Continuum we also started a Go learning bootcamp, a lot of people have expressed their interest and participated in regular meetups for learning how to build enterprise applications using the Go language. Want to join? Let us know, we are happy to invite you to the sessions.
Which programming languages would you like to use or learn to use?
The persistence Layer
Postgres is still the most dominant database. We assume this is also partially due to companies and projects not switching the persistence layer unless really necessary.
Upgrades are preferred over migrations as they have a much lower risk.
Which databases (max 3) have you been using intensively during the past 12 months?
JDK vendors and versions
On the JVM side the same players are still present, however we do see the new JDK vendors popping up. Also GraalVM was voted, will we see Java Native gaining traction. Can we assume that Spring jumping on the native train is also gaining traction with our clients … interesting to see how it will do next year during the survey!
Which JDK have you been using the most in the last 12 months?
We are happy to see that Java 17 has overtaken Java 11. We assume that people are following the JDK upgrades as well as they can. From a security point of view and developer experience / joy we are happy to see this happening
Which Java version are you using at this moment on your development environment?
Development and tooling
IntelliJ is still the main IDE. As our target group was Java, this is somewhat to be expected. It remains the de facto standard solution for the enterprise Java developer.
Maven and Gradle are still the main build platforms. Interesting to see NX popping up together with Webpack … are mono repo’s also spreading on the market ?
Which build platform(s) (max 3) are you using the most and do you find most valuable?
Like in 2022, Spring still dominates the Java market. Quarkus however has 10%, as is it still is a young framework, interesting to see how it progresses the next couple of years.
Which application frameworks (max 3) have you used the most in the last 12 months?
Angular and React are still the most common web frameworks used according to the survey. Vue still hasn’t closed the gap. The frontend eco system seems to be stable focusing on those 3 as the main frameworks.
Which web frameworks (max 3) have you used the most in the last 12 months?
Docker is still providing a lot of value according to our respondents. Interesting to see how the license change of Docker desktop will affect this in the future …
Git is also very important to all the developers. Luckily the days of SVN, CVS and … are behind us. We are still amazed how much impact Linus Torvalds has had on the developer community.
Which tools have you been using intensively (max 3) in the last 12 months and are a real added value for you?
On the cloud front, AWS and Azure are still the dominant players in the Belgian market. This all confirms what we see at our clients.
Which Cloud Platform have you been using mainly in the last 12 months?
This year we also asked a couple of new questions from things we saw at our clients and in the market. Here are some of the results and assumptions we made from these answers.
JUnit, Mockito and AssertJ seem to be the standard for writing tests for many of our respondents. Something we can confirm looking at our own projects as well.
Which testing frameworks (max 3) have you used the most in the last 12 months and do you find most valuable?
The shift left focus is also noticeable in the automated security tooling. SonarQube seems to be the most used tool. Hopefully the 11% None will be shrinking the following years.
Which automated security tooling (max 3) did you use in the last 12 months and do you find most valuable?
No clear winner in the monitoring space. We also see this at our own clients. Opensource, commercial and cloud provided tools … many companies use a mix of all of these …
What are you using for monitoring and alerting (max 3) and do you find most valuable?
Good old Jenkins is still the most used tool for doing CICD according to our responses. Github Actions seems to be the next big player in this market.
Which CICD tooling (max 3) are you using most intensively in the last 12 months?
With regards to deployments, the difference between weekly and Quarterly is very small. We assume that the need for deployment of every feature as quickly as possible is not that important for most of our respondents.
How often do you deploy to production?
Most of our respondents are using the Atlassian stack. This also confirms what we see at our clients. Interesting to see if Github will close the gap with Atlassian or not …
Which Development Collaboration platform have you been using the most in the last 12 months?
For our respondents, DDD and TDD are clearly valuable principles. Pair programming is a close third here. We are happy to see that these principles are recognised as being valuable as we also think they can add a lot of value to projects and teams.
Which kind of principles are you using (max 3) and do you find most valuable?
AI is everywhere, but it seems a lot of developers are not using it to aid with the development. We assume this has to do, with many companies still not clear on what the rules are. The answers to the questions like “What happens to code I paste into an AI?” or “Who is the IP owner of the code that comes out of an AI?” (and other similar questions) still need to be further investigated in order for mainstream to adopt these tools in their daily coding. Interesting to see how this will evolve in the future.
Are you using AI for helping with development?
Project Loom and Spring native are the new things people are waiting for. We assume that most of our respondents want to get the features and value to the end users, which features that are used for this might be less exciting for the +30 year old developer. Hence the large % of votes on “I’m not so excited about features…”
Which feature are you most excited about for the future? Choose max 3 features!
Stackoverflow is by far the most used technology website by our respondents. We actually didn’t expect anything else … 😀
Which technology websites are you active on the most?
The final question we asked was how people learn. As we see it, people tend to learn differently. We are glad to see a lot of people learn on the job and through
Knowledge sharing. Within IT continuous learning is very important, that’s why we at Continuum also hold regular knowledge sharing events. Follow us on our social media channels, if you see something interesting passing by … you are always welcome to join these events.
How/where do you learn new things?
A big thanks to everyone that filled in the survey!
Want to know more about the results or want to see other questions being asked , feel free to contact us.
Bjorn Monnens
CTO
Bjorn has multiple decades of experience in the software development domain. He has taken up different roles within multiple organisations, since 2015 he has taken up the role as CTO.
