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Data from _Github_ is making this argument? Java is surely embedded in the kinds of enterprises that would never share a line of code publicly. I can believe J

Data from _Github_ is making this argument? Java is surely embedded in the kinds of enterprises that would never share a line of code publicly. I can believe Java is "in decline" for new open source projects, but that's not the same thing as being "in decline" among working programmers.

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rwalle 4y ago
Yes and no. The community activity can affect enterprise use as well. For smaller, new projects that do not depend on existing codebase, companies realize that they can build things using a different language which may bring in faster development speeds, active community support and other benefits. Also, if a smaller portion candidate pool knows Java or masters Java, it forces companies to rethink their direction. (At my company we have a lot of trouble hiring people who want to write new code using some legacy stack) Anecdotally, I know as a matter of fact that companies are moving away from building UI in Java. (I know, this is not the best example.) There used to be a time where people create lots of apps using Java Swing and frameworks based on it. Not anymore -- companies are running away as fast as possible, because things break all the time and hardly anyone is maintaining anything. Guess what they choose instead? The web stack is a favorite.
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  The reasons for leaving Swing aren't things breaking all the time or being unmaintained. Swing is maintained by Oracle and JetBrains, for example it recently got a Metal backend. It's been continuously maintained for, what, 20 years now? Compared to the JavaScript framework world, Java UI toolkits are highly stable. Both Android and desktop Java have only had two UI toolkit transitions in their history (Views/Jetpack Compose, Swing/JavaFX respectively), with interop existing in both cases. The issues are elsewhere. For example distribution is/was harder than for a web app, though jlink and Conveyor [1] makes it much easier now than it used to be. [1] https://hydraulic.software/ https://hydraulic.software/ (disclaimer: my company/product)

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rwalle 4y ago

Yes and no. The community activity can affect enterprise use as well. For smaller, new projects that do not depend on existing codebase, companies realize that they can build things using a different language which may bring in faster development speeds, active community support and other benefits. Also, if a smaller portion candidate pool knows Java or masters Java, it forces companies to rethink their direction. (At my company we have a lot of trouble hiring people who want to write new code using some legacy stack) Anecdotally, I know as a matter of fact that companies are moving away from building UI in Java. (I know, this is not the best example.) There used to be a time where people create lots of apps using Java Swing and frameworks based on it. Not anymore -- companies are running away as fast as possible, because things break all the time and hardly anyone is maintaining anything. Guess what they choose instead? The web stack is a favorite.

mike_hearn 4y ago
The reasons for leaving Swing aren't things breaking all the time or being unmaintained. Swing is maintained by Oracle and JetBrains, for example it recently got a Metal backend. It's been continuously maintained for, what, 20 years now? Compared to the JavaScript framework world, Java UI toolkits are highly stable. Both Android and desktop Java have only had two UI toolkit transitions in their history (Views/Jetpack Compose, Swing/JavaFX respectively), with interop existing in both cases. The issues are elsewhere. For example distribution is/was harder than for a web app, though jlink and Conveyor [1] makes it much easier now than it used to be. [1] https://hydraulic.software/ https://hydraulic.software/ (disclaimer: my company/product)