The team behind Perforce Software's JRebel Java tool has conducted its annual Java Developer Productivity survey. 440 Java developers from 72 countries provide insights into Java use in their companies. It is noticeable that the majority of companies are planning to invest in additional skilled workers this year. Developer productivity teams also seem to play a crucial role, which, according to the study organizers, will increase in the future.
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Investments in Java developers and tools
Good prospects for Java programmers: According to 60 percent of those surveyed, their companies plan to hire more developers for Java this year. Another 27 percent are still undecided, while only 13 percent do not plan to hire new employees.
Many companies also want to expand their Java tool budget this year. 42 percent plan to increase it, while 36 percent are still unsure. For 31 percent of those surveyed, the annual budget for tools is $500 per developer or more. Last year this value was 22 percent.
Future and past: Dedicated productivity teams and legacy Java versions
While productivity teams operate under different names – including productivity teams or automation workgroups – and structures, according to the study, they have the common focus of exploring and implementing new tools and workflows. The study included such dedicated teams for the first time. While 43 percent of respondents believe that researching and implementing new tools should be an individual effort, 42 percent say their companies have dedicated productivity teams for this purpose. According to the JRebel team, these could ease the burden on individual developers, especially since 29 percent of those surveyed see an excessive number of tasks as the biggest hurdle to their developer productivity.
The JavaLand conference will take place at the Nürburgring for the first time this year from April 9th to 11th. The main conference of the anniversary edition offers around 140 lectures on the latest and upcoming developments around Java and Jakarta EE. The use of AI and the interaction with other programming languages are also on the agenda.
The JavaLand event is a community conference for Java developers and is held by the German Oracle User Community (DOAG) and Heise Medien in collaboration with the iJUG, the interest group of German-speaking Java user groups.
One of the less promising findings of the study, however, is that at the time of the survey, 18 percent were still using Java 11 and 24 percent were even using Java 8. Oracle discontinued premier support for Java 8 in March 2022, and for Java 11 in September 2023 with the publication of the current Java version 21 with Long-Term Support (LTS) – both before the start of the survey. Only 11 percent of respondents use the latest LTS release.
The JRebel team concludes that companies get their JDK support from other providers such as Amazon Corretto, Azul Zulu or OpenLogic. For example, 32 percent of respondents use Oracle Java, 20 percent use generic OpenJDK and 13 percent use Amazon Corretto.
Data basis
The “2024 Java Developer Productivity Report” is based on an anonymous survey between November 2023 and January 2024 with 440 participants from 72 countries, primarily from the USA (27%) and China (16%). The respondents from Germany make up four percent. Most of the participants describe their role as Java developer (42%) or architect (22%), but leadership roles such as team lead (15%) or director/vice president (11%) are also represented.
Respondents' team sizes range from one or two to over 100 developers, with most working in teams of three to nine people (29%). This is followed by teams with ten to twenty people (25%). A recent study by JetBrains and GitKraken showed that teams of up to ten people often work more effectively than larger teams.
Anyone interested can find the PDF report on the Java productivity study with the above and other results on the JRebel website by providing contact details.
(May)