What Java Brought in 2020

With the evolution of Java community, there have been a number of things that have greatly impacted the way the Java community continues to evolve. With 2020 coming to an end, let’s discuss some things we have learned in the Java community this year.

Java Is Here to Stay

Java has effectively maintained its relevance within the programming community and will likely continue to maintain that relevance going forward. Throughout the last twenty-five years, Java has often been considered dead by numerous users and experts throughout the community, yet it has continued to survive. The survival instinct is widely due to the massive community that Java community has.

I did a great webinar with Rod Cope and Justin Reock, titled Is Java Still Relevant?, where we discussed this exact point. I highly encourage you to view it below: 

All this has resulted in Java making necessary transitions to best address the community needs, which leads me to my second point.

Faster Release Cadence

Releases are able to be released more quickly and consistently throughout the Java community. This is a promising reality as more and more Java applications are being built with DevOps processes high in mind. This means that developers are working through producing results and deploying those results quicker than ever before. Oracle JDK has moved to a semiannual cadence with new versions released every six months (discussed in our blog What Is OpenJDK?). This has forced all of the community to follow a much faster cadence as well.

One aspect about these faster releases that I believe is great is the fact that we, as developers, get to experience and critique the features released more regularly. Previously, releases took months or years to release and typically had one or two “big” features and all kinds of little features that mostly get glossed over. With the more regular releases, you will see users interacting more directly with each feature and update introduced with a new release. This leads to better interaction throughout the community as well as a deeper grasp of technology you can take advantage of for your project.

Catch Up With the Latest Java Trends

The 2024 Java Developer Productivity Report is here. Dive into the data and see how trends have shifted. 

Download now 

Jakarta EE 9

Probably the biggest change in the Java community is the transition to Jakarta EE 9. While it was released much more recently, November 2020, it really has a huge impact on the Java community as a whole and will likely be one of the larger impacting changes made in 2020.

With the release of Jakarta EE 9, all java packaging is changing from javax.* to jakarta.*. The resulting impact is vast and will likely not be fully understood until 2021. Many applications, servers, and frameworks will have to make transition into this new packaging structure.

Additional Resources

No discussion of what 2020 brought to the development world would be complete without mentioning the impact of COVID. 

Earlier this year, JRebel conducted a global survey to find out how development professionals and companies have been impacted. Focus areas included the shift to remote work, staffing practices, hours worked, and developer productivity.

The results of the survey can be found in our COVID-19 Developer Impact Report, and key insights are discussed in our webinar below.