It seems one of the best ways to draw attention to a post or commentary on Java and programming is to use the words “Java” and some variation of “dead” in the headline. For instance, Mark Little, senior director of engineering at Red Hat, recently wrote a blog post entitled: “JBoss polyglot — death of Java?” And although the headline suggests that Red Hat’s JBoss unit is pushing a polyglot programming strategy of using several languages for different projects, the gist of the post is that the company is not trying to move away from Java. In fact, Little makes it plain: “We're as committed to Java today as we've ever been.” Oracle, the owner and steward of Java, is even encouraging Java supporters to use other languages on the Java virtual machine (JVM). The Da Vinci Machine Project is an effort to extend the JVM with first-class architectural support for languages other than Java, especially dynamic languages. There are several languages supported by the JVM, including Clojure, Groovy, Scala, JRuby, Jython, Rhino and AspectJ. Like the mainframe, Java isn’t going anywhere. It is the No. 1 language for enterprise development. IT organizations ask for it for major enterprise projects. There are more Java jobs around than any other. There continues to be a huge demand for Java developers, and as such, there is a large base of Java developers and new folks who are learning the language. It’s a stable language that enables developers to create well-structured code that is easily maintained.
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More Than 9 Million Served
Oracle estimates that there are more than 9 million Java developers worldwide.
No. 1 Choice for Developers
Java is the No. 1 language on the TIOBE Index and has been for months and months. The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers worldwide, courses and third-party vendors. The popular search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu are used to calculate the ratings.
3 Billion
Oracle estimates that 3 billion devices run Java.
Mobile
Because of Android, Java is one of the most popular mobile development platforms—even more popular in Asia than the United States, according to Evans Data Corp. “We’re seeing a definite resurgence in Java development across all regions,” said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data Corp., “which correlates directly with the increasing importance of the smartphone as a development target. Java is the most widely used language for smartphone development and is well-suited for most of the major platforms, including Android, BlackBerry and Symbian, and cross-platform Web development. Asia-Pacific developers are slightly out in front because smartphone development has been more deeply ingrained in that region.”
Enterprise Support
Oracle says 97 percent of enterprise desktops run Java.
Java EE
Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) is the standard for developing enterprise applications—from small-scale Web applications to large-scale, multitier enterprise applications.
OpenJDK
The OpenJDK project is the place to collaborate on an open-source implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition, and related projects. OpenJDK (Open Java Development Kit) is a free and open-source implementation of the Java programming language. Big supporters, including IBM, Apple, SAP, Azul and Twitter, have joined OpenJDK.
NetBeans
Oracle said there are more than 1 million active NetBeans users. NetBeans refers to both a platform framework for Java desktop applications and an integrated development environment (IDE) for developing with Java and several other languages.
TV
Oracle said the number of television devices running Java now stands at 115 million.
The Java Virtual Machine (JVM)
The JVM supports a host of different languages, primarily dynamic languages, running on top of it. Languages supported by the JVM include Clojure, Groovy, Scala, Ruby, Python and others.
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It seems one of the best ways to draw attention to a post or commentary on Java and programming is to use the words “Java” and some variation of “dead” in the headline. For instance, Mark Little, senior director of engineering at Red Hat, recently wrote a blog post entitled: “JBoss polyglot — death of Java?” And although the headline suggests that Red Hat’s JBoss unit is pushing a polyglot programming strategy of using several languages for different projects, the gist of the post is that the company is not trying to move away from Java. In fact, Little makes it plain: “We're as committed to Java today as we've ever been.” Oracle, the owner and steward of Java, is even encouraging Java supporters to use other languages on the Java virtual machine (JVM). The Da Vinci Machine Project is an effort to extend the JVM with first-class architectural support for languages other than Java, especially dynamic languages. There are several languages supported by the JVM, including Clojure, Groovy, Scala, JRuby, Jython, Rhino and AspectJ. Like the mainframe, Java isn’t going anywhere. It is the No. 1 language for enterprise development. IT organizations ask for it for major enterprise projects. There are more Java jobs around than any other. There continues to be a huge demand for Java developers, and as such, there is a large base of Java developers and new folks who are learning the language. It’s a stable language that enables developers to create well-structured code that is easily maintained.