Largest Java Developer Survey 2018

Recently I read a great article by Simon Maple and Andrew Binstock - The Largest Survey Ever of Java Developers on Java Magazine. There were 10,500 Java developers participating in the survey.

Here’s an extract of what I found most interesting.

Which Java vendor’s JDK developers mainly use?

The obvious winners so far are Oracle JDK and OpenJDK. Although with upcoming changes in licencing and support the figures might quite change in a next survey. I didn’t quite understand how 1% of those Java developers survive programming in Java with ‘None’ JDK. I didn’t find any explanation in the original article as well.

Which JDK developers use?

What Java EE version Java developers mainly use?

38% of Java developers don’t use Java EE at all. Hello, Spring Framework :-). Probably there are some Swing and JavaFX developers among them too, though.

Which Java EE developers use

What JVM language Java developers mainly use?

Java is a badass dominant here. Considering that for the past few years people have been talking about Kotlin a lot, only 2.42% of respondents use it as a primary language in their projects. Although it beats Scala, I’m surprised to see it is behind Clojure.

What JVM language developers use

Which IDE Java developers use?

IntelliJ IDEA is the best IDE I ever coded in. I used Eclipse and NetBeans before, but once I tried IntelliJ I never went back. I have nothing against vi/vim editor, I love to use them for quick editing of files or writing bash scripts. In fact, I think that any developer should have some basic knowledge of using vim and bash scripting. But using it as an IDE for Java project.. come on. If those 3% of respondents were actually serious about using vi/vim as a primary IDE, then they probably commute to work on horses and treat appendicitis with blood-lettings and laxatives.

Which IDE developers use

Which build tool Java developers mainly use?

Some developers use different build tools in their projects, so it’s worth to note that the question in the survey was asking for the principal build tool the developers use. The vast majority of projects are built using maven.

Which build tool developers use

Which CI tool Java developers use?

As most developers would expect, Jenkins wins the CI server race with a whopping 57% market share. Its closest competitor is “None” at 21% of the vote, which almost matches the rest of the competition combined (at 22%).

Which CI tool developers use

Which source code management tool dev teams mainly use?

I’m not surprised to see Git dominating the graph below. I am surprised to see that Subversion (a.k.a SVN) is still being used by 16% of the developers.

Which source code management tool developers use

Which testing technologies Java developers use?

Robert C. Martin said in his talk about Professionalism in Software Development that “we [programmers] are the surgeons doing an open-heart surgery on the systems of companies.. we are the reason the company makes money or loses money.. we are the ones who hold within our hands the lifeblood of the company”.

And yet 10% of developers answered that they use None of testing technologies.. none.. Well hello, sleepless night!

I honestly hope that those 10% of participants are just self-learning developers or students that aren’t working anywhere yet.

Which testing technologies developers use

Which non-JVM languages Java developers use in their applications?

There are a lot of Java applications being written nowadays with JavaScript running in front end of it. It’s not clear from the survey if they meant pure JavaScript or any of its syntactical supersets like TypeScript as well.

I also wonder if those 8% of respondents that don’t use any other non-JVM language in there project forgot to mention SQL/JavaScript as their DB query language.

Which non-JVM languages used in project

Which web frameworks Java developers?

I only worked with Spring MVC and Spring Boot and I’m glad to see that they are on the top of the list. It’s interesting though that Spring Boot has overtaken the Spring MVC.

Which web frameworks developers use

Which ORM frameworks developers use?

Note in the original article: Developers could choose more than one answer, so totals do not equal 100%.

More than half of the developers use Hibernate, surprise!

As for 23% that answered plain old JDBC and 20% that answered None the numbers might not be reflecting reality. Since JDBC is not ORM framework those who said None might still be using the plain old JDBC.

Which ORM frameworks developers use

Which database Java developers use?

Oracle is on the top of the list, then comes MySQL and PostgreSQL. Only 9% of Java developers use Microsoft SQL, which is not surprising because it’s the C#’s niche.

MongoDB is the highest NoSQL database with 5%, higher than IBM’s relational database DB2.

Which database developers use

Which application server developers mainly use?

Not much to add here, Tomcat rules.

Which application server developers use

How often Java developers release new versions of code?

7% of developers release multiple times a day.. that’s a bit more than I anticipated. Usually it’s the big players that hire geniuses and have streamlined processes can afford that..

How often do developers release new version

Where Java developers located?

The majority of developers are located in Europe and yet it’s hard as never before to hire a good software developer.. at least in Prague.

Where developers located

Age distribution of Java developers?

The majority of the software developers (38%) are 30 - 40 years old.

Age distribution of Java developers

Where developers get information about Java online?

The actual winner here should be Google. It’s just happens that most of the answers are found in Stack Overflow..

Where developers get information

How many of Java developers are members of a JUG?

Here’s what developers replied to the question “Are you a member of JUG?”. Only 7% are the active members of JUGs. 13% of those who visit 1-2 times per year aren’t far from another 13% who don’t attend meetings at all.

How many developers are members of JUG

How much do Java developers contribute to open source?

I wish I was not the majority here.. Open source is a great platform for combining the learning and contributing. BTW, here’s the great article about learning a new programming language by contributing to open source.

Most of the developers have some sort of a pet project that they work on in their free time, and finding extra time to contribute to open source is not always easy, considering that 38% of developers are 30 - 40 years old, the time when people usually start getting married and having kids.. bye-bye free time.