Lessons from the JVM Ecosystem Report
Last week, Java Magazine and Snyk released an interesting survey report, called the JVM Ecosystem Report. Zeroturnaround and JRebel have done similar surveys in previous years. The Eclipse Foundation also completed a Java EE survey earlier this year. These types of surveys always have their own biases but I do find they provide an interesting snapshot into a developer community.
In this case, this report provides a good snapshot into the tools Java developers are using. It is definitely worth reading the entire report. Here are 5 things I found interesting from this years report.
1. Java 8 is the dominant platform
79% of Java developers are using Java 8 as their main platform in production. It would appear Java developers are finally dropping Java 7 but are slow to pick-up on Java 9. It will be interesting to watch the trend towards adopting Java 9 but it is clear to be a slow start.
2. IntelliJ proving developers will pay for tools
I have worked in open source tools and Java IDEs for a long time. Open source has made it a struggle for tools vendors to sell IDEs to developers. Therefore, I was very surprised to see 32% of Java developers are paying for IntelliJ IDEA. This is pretty close to the same number, 38%, using Eclipse. Congrats to IntelliJ for proving developers will pay for their IDE!
3. Gradle has not dethroned Maven
A number of years ago Gradle was the new kid on the block for build tools. It seemed the Gradle momentum was going to have it surpass the established king of build tools, Maven. However, it would appear the growth of Gradle has slowed. Maven is using by 60% of developers and Gradle only 19%. Sometimes it is really hard to replace existing infrastructure technology.
4. GitHub is not king of code repositories
Most, if not all serious, open source projects are using GitHub. Therefore, I was pretty shocked by the responses to ‘what code repository do you use for you main project?’ GitHub and Bitbucket are tied with 25% and GitLab is a close second at 20%. The answers do include private and public repos so it is not specific to open source. However, it does show Bitbucket and GitLabs are doing really well. Nice to see GitHub has some serious competition.
5. Software release cycles are short
I don’t ever remember seeing a survey asking ‘How often do you release new version of your code’. Therefore, it was interesting to see the response from this survey. I was a bit surprised to see 72% claim they release code at least once a month. Agile development and Devops are definitely influencing shorter release cycles.
Thank you to the authors of the report Simon Maple and Andrew Binstock. I know these surveys take a lot of time to produce. Publishing the results for everyone to see is a great asset to the community.