Most respondents to a recent survey on Java productivity said their companies plan to add Java developers this year, while a bit less than half plan to increase their Java tool budget.
These findings were included the 2024 Java Productivity Report from development tools provider Perforce Software, released March 5. Overall, the survey found that investments in Java tools and talent were on the rise. Sixty percent of respondents said their companies planned to add Java developers this year and only 13% said their companies did not (27% were unsure). Developer tool budgets look to be holding steady, with 42% planning to increase their Java tools budget.
The report featured responses from 440 Java users worldwide, with a mix of Perforce customers and non-customers. Respondents were spread across 72 countries, with 27% from the United States. Polling was conducted from November 2023 to January 2024. Most respondents were either Java developers or Java architects.
Regarding Java usage trends, 11% said they had already upgraded to the most recent version of standard Java, Java 21, while 24% said they were using Java 8 and 18% said they were using Java 11. Given that Oracle discontinued Premier-level support for Java 8 in March 2022, the Java 8 figure implies that companies are getting support from third-party vendors such as Amazon, Azul, and OpenLogic, Perforce said.
Perforce expects adoption of Java 21 to increase as Oracle accelerates the frequency of long-term support JDK releases from every three years to every two years.
Other findings in the 2024 Java Developer Productivity Report:
- Amazon Web Services was the most popular cloud provider at 31%, followed by Microsoft Azure at 18%. The share of respondents who said they do not use any cloud providers fell to 13% from 21% last year.
- JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA topped the list of preferred IDEs, with 41% of respondents using it. Eclipse took second place with 23%. Microsoft Visual Studio Code took third with 19%.
- 36% said they use Apache Tomcat as their main application server, while 15% said they use JBoss/Wildfly.