Additional Considerations Regarding the Java Ecosystem

This article originally appeared in DZone's Java Zone.

Executives raised several questions and made interesting observations.

To gather insights on the state of the Java ecosystem today for DZone's Java Ecosystem research guide to be published in September, we spoke with 15 executives who are familiar with the Java ecosystem.

Here’s who we talked to:

Joel Depernet, E.V.P. Global Research and Development, Axway | Sacha Labourey, CEO and Founder, CloudBees | Rick Reich, CEO, Development Heroes | Asad Ali, Principal Software Developer and Lisa Hamaker, Marketing Manager, Dynatrace | David Park, V.P. of Products, HackerRank | Charles Kendrick, Founder and CTO, Isomorphic Software | Wayne Citrin, CTO, JNBridge | Raymond Augé, Senior Software Architect, Liferay | Laura Kassovic, Founder, MbientLab | Cameron Wilby, Co-Founder, Origin Code Academy | James Faulkner, Technology Evangelist, Red Hat | Paul Trowe, CEO, Replay Games | Calvin French-Owen, CTO and Co-Founder, Segment

We asked our respondents, "What have we failed to ask you that we need to consider with regard to the Java ecosystem?" Here's what they told us:

• What could Java be doing better? Like JavaScript, look at opportunities to make it easier for developers to write reusable code with greater functionality. Its advantage is that it works on any OS. They need to make the programming more flexible.
• If you’re just getting started, start with Java because it’s universal. There are a lot of devices and you can begin adding layers on top of Java.
• I’m very happy with the outcome of the lawsuit between Google and Oracle. There are strong ramifications with money being the least important. Freedom of implementation is very important.
• Support of Java in the operating system or virtual environment. You need an application server. We might see a lot of Open Source and Tom Kat platforms that allow Java to run. Continuous integrations and building has a few de facto tools like Maven and Jenkins. From the Java perspective, it’s all easy to adopt. Customers at large enterprise companies have an appetite for PaaS. Because of this, Java has surpassed .Net in the last few years.
• Frameworks used in Java – Spring, J2EE.
• It’s important to broaden your outlook and know JVM-based languages. Interoperability tools include anything reached from the Java platform. The footprint will only get larger.
• As more and more infrastructure moves to the cloud or to cloud-like provisioning, will these services run on Java or on JVMs at all? Java is playing catch-up to the tremendous scalability and ease of use offered by Node.js and other players, who offer lightweight, simple, highly efficient VMs. If you are running a service that is going to compete on cost, it’s hard to argue that Java is the right technology to build with. As Node.js and other alternative platforms gain popularity and have solutions to more and more server-side needs, Java’s ecosystem advantage will be slowly eroded. Java is used for front-end development principally because of its dominance on the backend. If Java’s backend dominance fades, front-end use could disappear very very quickly.
• Java is notorious for all of the zero-day exploits and is only second to Adobe Flash in terms of number of vulnerabilities and security patches. This is a very crucial point to consider when using Java.
• We shied away from Java because running it in production can be complicated. You need to know the JVM and the settings. It would be great if there were an opportunity to run Java apps having the setting configured for you the way Amazon is doing with ElasticSearch and MapReduce. It’s a best practice to become easier to use.
• Java has competitors. Move to Go is driven by the ecosystem. We acquired a company that was a JavaScript shop for mobile applications. There will be more opportunities with mobile. Will Java keep pace?
• Top Java frameworks. How to use with web clients and frameworks.
• Why don’t companies find it important to give back to the Java community?Companies have been slow to contribute. Java growth is related to the cloud. New, modern microservices are early in their progressions. Concept of Java app services have not been realized, rather replaced with container orchestration layers.

What other issues do you have regarding the Java ecosystem?

Additional articles Tom has written for DZone.