There are not many technologies that can brag about staying relevant for more than 20 years. But this year, Java has been voted the 5th most popular technology, eclipsed only by undisputed leaders JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and SQL. While it's 18th on the list of most loved in the same StackOverflow survey, it's also way down the list in its most-dreaded ranking. Today we unravel the many successes of Java – the time-honored technology with the iconic steaming cup-of-coffee logo, a language near and dear to many programmers today.

With the release of Java 19 in September, the ubiquitous software development language is celebrating its 27-year anniversary. In that time, Java has grown to dominate the development landscape – and job market – and today is still one of the most popular and sought-after development skills.

As a Java enthusiast, it’s rewarding for me to look back on how much Java has evolved over the years, adapting, improving and supporting an ever-growing list of platforms and applications in the modern era of programming, portability, security, scalability, and resilience.

It’s not a stretch to say that most of the world’s leading open-source frameworks have been written in Java, including Microsoft Azure Spring Cloud, VMWare Spring, Redhat Quarkus, MicroProfile, and Micronaut, to name a few, all of which are favoured by countless developers globally for building their software applications.

Whether it’s a Google Android mobile app, client server web app, embedded device, video game, cloud computing application, IoT, or Big Data project, Java is always there, in part or in whole.

Which brings me to the point of this article. Writing this towards the latter part of 2022, I feel that Java is not only relevant, but will continue to dominate the development landscape in the next few years, and I’ve summarized my eight primary reasons for this below.

• Jobs! The job market for Java developers is hot, even in 2022. Unicorn Java developers are still in high demand for several types of development roles. According to DevJobsScanner, one of the world’s largest online IT job sites, Java was in the top three most sought-after language skills after JavaScript and Python between April 2021 and May 2022.
   
• Ubiquity. Almost all global organizations in the banking, finance and insurance industries still use of Java for enterprise level applications.
   
• Versatility. Java is a Jack-of-all-trades, and master in many cases too:
  • A wide variety of implementations are available in the Spring ecosystem, Jakarta EE (Jakarta Enterprise Edition), and Java Micro Editions.
  • It is still one of the best choices for Cloud computing and IoT development work due to its general-purpose, versatile, and robust nature.
  • JVM-based programming languages such as Jetbrain’s Kotlin, Scala and Groovy are still used everywhere.
  • Google Android developers enjoy building mobile applications using Java and Kotlin.
  • Apart from the above use cases, Java is used to write Machine Learning programs, create neural networks, and feature widely in AI-related applications.
  
   
• Community. Java has a helpful, resourceful, and welcoming open-source community to support any developer’s learning and experience.
   
• Compatibility. Version 19 of the Java Development Kit is still backward-compatible with previous versions.
   
• Variety. Wide varieties of rich APIs and a massive number of open-source libraries are available for Java and various Java-based frameworks. This makes development work fit for purpose on any give project, and fast tracks its release process too. Good examples of this include Google Guava, Eclipse and Apache Foundation’s list of open-source libraries, and JSON Jackson.
   
• Predictability. A stable and prudent release cycle gives developers new features on a regular basis, with proper support and structure in place for forward porting or upgrades to applications, environments, and infrastructure.
   
• Cloud. Java is becoming stronger in the cloud-native digital transformation journey with frameworks such as GraalVM, Quarkus, Micronaut and Vert.X. Java is also extensively supported on the Java-based Spring framework, Spring Boot, and various other frameworks by public cloud providers such as AWS, Redhat, Microsoft Azure (Azure Spring Cloud), and VMWare Tanzu.

For almost three decades, the Java community and Oracle have improved and evolved the Java ecosystem. The release of popular frameworks like Quarkus, Microprofile, Micronaut, Spring 6, Spring Security 6, and Spring Boot 3 has brought a lot of joy to the open-source developers’ community, though developers will need to stay on their toes as more Java updates are released in the next few years.

I am really humbled to see and experience the success of Java as a programming language, and how the community has adapted to keep on improving and responding to emerging trends in the software development industry.

Long live Java!