Java Technology has been a significant part of the technology industry since the 1990s. With a loyal community of top developers, backup from Oracle and timely updates coming in the form of JDK (Java Development Kit) releases, Java is still thriving and has a long, promising way to go.
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With the growing number software developers who choose to specialize as Java Developers, the future Java roadmap looks well-populated. With this future Java roadmap, every developer can receive guidance on a number of things. The Java roadmap also enables all kinds of developers in the Java community from an amateur to a professional to make the correct decisions and gain the right skillset to master one’s software development career.
Java has made a lot of progress since it started two decades ago. From going to enterprises applications to web development, from mobile technology to data sciences, Java has invested in a lot of different technologies and tools. As a result of this, it has added to its own market stability. Nonetheless, continuous evolution is underway.
Java as a language is guided forward via a series of JDK enhancement proposals. These proposals range from some minor changes to some very significant ones like Lambdas in Java 8 that came resulted in major changes in functionality.
The future improvements to the language, according to the new Java roadmap, can be expected via upcoming JDK Enhancement Proposals (JEP). The projects associated with these JEPs always bring some promising functionality and improvements (such as Project Amber) recently provided many new language improvements such as Text Blocks, Local-variable Type Inference and Switch Expressions.
See Also: Language Support For Java (TM) By Red Hat
Several newer, bigger projects are also under development right now and will introduce both language and API changes in the future. Project Panama is working on improving Java working with non-Java APIs while other projects like Project Loom aim to improve the language and platform’s asynchronous programming techniques. In the near future, completion of these projects will result in improving the efficiency and productivity of Java coders everywhere.
It is not that easy to predict the next big innovation in Java Development. (Java is already working in so many diverse areas). But the curiosity of top developers within the Java community has provided a helpful beam into upcoming technologies.
One of these is to measure the impact of major changes in the Java Enhancement Process on dependent technologies.
Many Java Coders have observed that many of the changes we see in Java technologies are reactive and are aimed towards maintaining the features, keeping them error-free and maintaining the relevance of the language for existing users.
Other changes in the Java technology ecosystem can be seismic in nature, i.e. impacting other technologies across all development languages. Providing features for other technology users to easily work with Java’s technologies encourages them to work with Java. Amidst such fierce competition, technology companies are forced to innovate to meet rising demand and expectation. Or risk becoming irrelevant.
The Java LTS or (Long Term Support) version comes with some extremely important new features within it. The two most recent Java LTS versions are Java 8 and Java 11. The next planned LTS version, JDK 17, has a release planned for September 2021. Java’s top developers look forward to LTS versions because the previous LTS versions worked effectively as conversion tools. According to one research, earlier Java LTS versions, namely, Java 8 and Java 11 account for over 80% of Java users today.
While Spring Boot and Spring Cloud are the most commonly used Java Frameworks for development, some other advanced frameworks are also gaining momentum and will be more relevant in Java’s future.
Microprofile was created by some top software developers in the Java community for Enterprise Java. It was made to optimize Enterprise Java for Microservice Architecture. As the name suggests, it is driven by Eclipse, one of the leading organizations of Java and the company that made Eclipse IDE. It is used to define standard APIs for building micro-services and deliver portable applications across multiple MicroProfile runtimes.
Micronaut is a modern, JVM-based, full-stack framework for building modular, easily testable microservice and serverless applications. It is a polyglot framework and allows using Java, Kotlin, or Groovy to create an application. Some of its features include reduced startup time, fast throughput, and minimal memory footprint.
Quarkus is a Kubernetes Native Java Stack tailored for OpenJDK HotSpot and GraalVM, it was made using some of the best Java libraries and standards. Quarkus tailors your application for GraalVM and HotSpot to provide quick boot time and incredibly low RSS memory. Aiming for a ‘Java future’? This is the right place to start!
Unlike others, Github is not a framework but one of the most commonly used version control frameworks with more than 50 million users. Last year, Java released two JEPs proposing the migration from Mericus to Git and Github. The migration will occur soon enough. It is expected to happen either next year with JDK 16 or later with LTS JDK 17. This is an ideal timeline for every Java Developer to prepare for it.
The Java Roadmap certainly looks bright. What keeps the technology relevant are the many ways Java adapts to its competitive environment:
This kind of adaptability has cemented Java’s position as a leader in the market. We are confident it will keep attracting new developers and technology’s top talent for years to come.
As a developer, or other technology professional, please share your views on the new Java roadmap and where you see Java’s future heading in the next decade.
Shaharyar Lalani is a developer with a strong interest in business analysis, project management, and UX design. He writes and teaches extensively on themes current in the world of web and app development, especially in Java technology.
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