There are vibrant java user's groups all around the world. There are many java community conferences. The most recent redmonk language rankings[0] show java at #3.
The world is big :) .
0: https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2025/06/18/language-rankings-1-2...
We all have different circles. I work for a bank and the bulk of the LOB code here is Java (or something that runs under a JVM). There are no Oracle databases as far as I know, but my visibility is limited.
Also, Oracle Applications for things like HR.
When something has been there for 20+ years switching costs are big.
Regulatory thing for us, some workloads need production support for the data tier for various boring legal and compliance reasons, so our choices are kida limited to oracle and, these days, mongo, who have made massive inroads to enterprise in the last couple years.
Personally, I prefer Mongo.
We have Oracle blocked at the router (!) to prevent anyone downloading the Oracle JDK and incurring the wrath of Oracle licensing.
Some NeXT products like WebObjects got ported to Java (and ran not only the iTunes backend but also things like the original Dell online store) and there was something called the Java bridge which allowed you to program Cocoa applications with Java.
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...
Oh, and with Yellow Box for Windows, this was also possible on Windows.
If you look at the screenshots here, it's mostly Windows 2000: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Le...
Along with MacOS X, Apple's Xcode IDE even had native java project support briefly in this era as well.
We didn't touch a fairly esoteric language called Python much. Because we saw the future. Java and IPv6 was about to change everything.
It was definitely the thing for a while. Although I remember my very first steps with Java and Swing and my primary impression was "this is so slow".
One of the versions of the most popular game in the world is written in Java, and it's quite capable of being very fast.
Apple should do more of that - they make cool computers, and should use cool languages.
To be fair, I know people hate on it, but I honestly do kind of think Objective C is kind of a cool language. I think it's ugly but I think the message-passing style semantics are kind of neat.
Wasn't that because iTunes started out as a NextStep WebObjects application? WebObjects started on Objective C, transitioned to a framework for Java in early 2000's, came to Apple with the Next acquisition.
Typically I see folks using the Amazon Corretto java distribution.
> Typically I see folks using the Amazon Corretto java distribution.
It means nothing. ~90% of core development of JDK and JVM is done by Oracle employees and it is shared by all distributions by various vendors.
Both Java and C#/.NET are super-popular in Enterprise land, with the choice between them mainly being if the enterprise is a Microsoft shop or not.
Everything SAP touches is written in Java too, and it's boring old payroll stuff. There's the entire Android user interface with millions of Java-only app developers.
Oracle may well be in bed with the spooks, but it's not a Java-specific thing.
I totally get it, but it made me a bit sad because they were even weary of something like GraalVM for some projects where startup time was becoming an issue; I think the Community Edition for GraalVM would have been fine but I think they had this "we don't touch anything with an the Oracle name directly attached with a ten foot pole". Which is totally fair.
[1] It's not hard to find which one but I politely ask that you do not post it here in relation to this thread.
> The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away.
Well, the writer said the only Java devs THEY KN OW, not all Java devs.
It sounds like your personal anecdote is particularly uninformative then.
I always find these “relative to me” claims not very informative on the internet. But it fun when every once in a while you notice the claimer is Bill Joy or Linus Torvalds or someone where the relativeness holds weight.
This can’t be a serious comment. I’d say probably half the world‘s B2B and enterprise runs on Java. Especially in Europe.
Huh??? Google, the search engine part, is written in Java as far as I know. Yandex uses Java extensively. Odnoklassniki, once second most popular Russian social network, is written in Java. Banks like Java. Android apps are written in Java (and Kotlin, which I consider an abstraction over Java).
And that's only what I can remember right away. A sizable chunk of the world runs on Java.
and if you hire an offshore outsourcing company, odds are that they will insist on something java (spring) based, as that's where their experience is
That being said, Oracle’s valuation is based on their huge integrated ecosystem. That they also control Java, while not insignificant, probably only plays a minor role there.