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Oracle and Java are deeply embedded in US gov work. How deep? Let's just say a large number of classified developer jobs hire for Java. Ellison has been a huge

Oracle and Java are deeply embedded in US gov work. How deep? Let's just say a large number of classified developer jobs hire for Java. Ellison has been a huge proponent of a surveillance state, and that likely ingratiates him with certain three letter agencies. The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away.

glitchc 7mo ago
The financial market infrastructure heavily relies on Java. Transactions at commercial banks across North America are mostly executed on Java codebases.
bobthepanda 7mo ago
Java is not uncommon. Off the top of my head, a certain rainforest company and a lot of banks and EMR providers use it.
- wredcoll 7mo ago
  Amazon, among others, write a lot of java, but they want absolutely nothing to do with oracle licenses for java
  - bobthepanda 7mo ago
    Right, I just feel like this is a bit over the top > The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away.
    - burnte 7mo ago
      > Right, I just feel like this is a bit over the top Well, the writer said the only Java devs THEY KN OW, not all Java devs.
  - tombert 7mo ago
    I worked for a drug discovery company doing Java [1] since we were using Kafka Streams very liberally, but everything was done with the OpenJDK Temurin distribution. It was drilled into our heads on the first day do not install anything from Oracle. I think they were afraid of some weird lawsuit unless they bought an expensive license. I totally get it, but it made me a bit sad because they were even weary of something like GraalVM for some projects where startup time was becoming an issue; I think the Community Edition for GraalVM would have been fine but I think they had this "we don't touch anything with an the Oracle name directly attached with a ten foot pole". Which is totally fair. [1] It's not hard to find which one but I politely ask that you do not post it here in relation to this thread.
    - mort96 7mo ago
      I'm sure GraalVM is nice enough technology but I don't understand why anyone would actively choose to use a JVM from Oracle if they can avoid it.
      - tombert 7mo ago
        The Ahead of Time compilation is pretty nice for some stuff. Generally startup time is significantly improved, so if you're writing command line tools in particular it can be cool.
        mort96 7mo ago
        Most languages I write are ahead of time compiled with pretty good startup time so it's not really a need I have that I feel GraalVM solves?
        tombert 7mo ago
        Yes but Java has historically had pretty long startup times. If you want to write Java specifically then GraalVM is probably still the best option for AOT.
      - pjmlp 7mo ago
  - coredog64 7mo ago
    They have their own OpenJDK distribution (Amazon Corretto)
  - pjmlp 7mo ago
    They surely like the work Oracle employees provide to OpenJDK.
sleepybrett 7mo ago
I think that overstates, there is a lot of java in the enterprise still, it's lose share to golang and typescript and in certain cases rust, but it's still around and doing just fine (to my annoyance).
tombert 7mo ago
Apple used Java in a ton of backend stuff. At least the entire backend for iTunes (Jingle) was written in Java and very very small amount of Clojure.
- jen20 7mo ago
  One only need look at the job postings for Apple to see quite how common Java backend is there.
  - butterlesstoast 7mo ago
    Checks out https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/search?search=java&sort=relevance&location=united-states-USA https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/search?search=java&sort=relevan...
  - shrikant 7mo ago
    Yeah I can see that, even when a recruiter contacted me a few years back for a data engineering position, they were looking strictly for experience in JVM-based languages.
- rbanffy 7mo ago
  > Clojure Apple should do more of that - they make cool computers, and should use cool languages.
  - tombert 7mo ago
    Yeah, I wish they did more Clojure as well. As far as I could tell, it was kind of snuck in about ~12 years ago, and it kind of grew from there. To be fair, I know people hate on it, but I honestly do kind of think Objective C is kind of a cool language. I think it's ugly but I think the message-passing style semantics are kind of neat.
    - jimbokun 7mo ago
      Adding Smalltalk message passing as an extension to C was very clever and allowed writing very efficient code and dynamic high level UI code in a single language. The semantics were kept clear by the distinctive syntax of message passing. And allowed access to any existing C libraries.
mooreds 7mo ago
My employer is actively hiring java engineers and we don't "take pictures of things from far away". There are vibrant java user's groups all around the world. There are many java community conferences. The most recent redmonk language rankings[0] show java at #3. The world is big :) . 0: https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2025/06/18/language-rankings-1-25/ https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2025/06/18/language-rankings-1-2...
- jvanderbot 7mo ago
  You're right of course, but we only just met! You're the first of probably many counter examples.
lenerdenator 7mo ago
The question then becomes, does Java warrant the valuation Oracle has when the language itself is mostly FLOSS?
- layer8 7mo ago
  Oracle effectively still largely controls the evolution of the language and of OpenJDK, and Java is still a registered Oracle trademark. While it could be forked and renamed if necessary (as happened in the javax –> jakarta transition), that would likely end up being quite disruptive and costly. That being said, Oracle’s valuation is based on their huge integrated ecosystem. That they also control Java, while not insignificant, probably only plays a minor role there.
- pjmlp 7mo ago
  Who do you think pays most of the salaries of people working on OpenJDK?
iamjake648 7mo ago
Interesting, the _majority_ of developers I know write in JVM languages - mostly Kotlin for new stuff at this point. Typically I see folks using the Amazon Corretto java distribution.
- geodel 7mo ago
  It could mean you know very few developers. > Typically I see folks using the Amazon Corretto java distribution. It means nothing. ~90% of core development of JDK and JVM is done by Oracle employees and it is shared by all distributions by various vendors.
- pjmlp 7mo ago
  So you actually know a lot of Android developers.
bjord 7mo ago
it's not purely gov work—lots of legacy software (especially outside of the US) is java-based and if you hire an offshore outsourcing company, odds are that they will insist on something java (spring) based, as that's where their experience is
- vips7L 7mo ago
  Lots of green field apps are Java based too. I just started a new codebase in Java 25.
pjc50 7mo ago
We use Java. We have Oracle blocked at the router (!) to prevent anyone downloading the Oracle JDK and incurring the wrath of Oracle licensing.
rbanffy 7mo ago
> The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away. We all have different circles. I work for a bank and the bulk of the LOB code here is Java (or something that runs under a JVM). There are no Oracle databases as far as I know, but my visibility is limited. Also, Oracle Applications for things like HR.
- InsideOutSanta 7mo ago
  Yeah, lots of corporate backend code is Java, and Java is a great choice for backend/server code. I've never seen Oracle anywhere, though, not in banks and not in governments. I've mostly seen Postgres and MSSQL and some MongoDB.
  - JackFr 7mo ago
    I've been working in Wall St. banks for the past 30 years, and I've never used an Oracle database. The investment banks were all Sybase shops in the 90's, and a bunch of them still are. In my experience those that do move are most likely to go to SQL Server, since its Sybase roots make the transition a little easier. When something has been there for 20+ years switching costs are big.
    - cyberpunk 7mo ago
      I work for a pretty big one and we’ve got an exacc or twelve. Regulatory thing for us, some workloads need production support for the data tier for various boring legal and compliance reasons, so our choices are kida limited to oracle and, these days, mongo, who have made massive inroads to enterprise in the last couple years. Personally, I prefer Mongo.
layer8 7mo ago
Look at who is making OpenJDK distributions besides Oracle: Amazon, Microsoft, Red Hat, IBM, Eclipse, SAP, … It’s being used everywhere.
ghurtado 7mo ago
> The only developers I know who write Java It sounds like your personal anecdote is particularly uninformative then.
- prepend 7mo ago
  Useful for letting us know that GP has a limited network and situational awareness. I always find these “relative to me” claims not very informative on the internet. But it fun when every once in a while you notice the claimer is Bill Joy or Linus Torvalds or someone where the relativeness holds weight.
losvedir 7mo ago
What? What kind of ridiculous bubble are you in? Isn't Java one of the main languages at Google, Netflix, Amazon, etc?
amiga386 7mo ago
There are probably millions of corporate projects written in Java. One of the reasons Oracle bought Sun Microsystems (who invented Java) was because Oracle itself had written so much middleware crap in Java. Both Java and C#/.NET are super-popular in Enterprise land, with the choice between them mainly being if the enterprise is a Microsoft shop or not. Everything SAP touches is written in Java too, and it's boring old payroll stuff. There's the entire Android user interface with millions of Java-only app developers. Oracle may well be in bed with the spooks, but it's not a Java-specific thing.
nsxwolf 7mo ago
There are literally millions of us that write Java and don't work for the CIA. It's like still in the top 3 of all languages.
- bombcar 7mo ago
  I was surprised at first to learn Minecraft was a CIA plot and then I thought about it and it all fit together :)
malfist 7mo ago
Amazon is predominantly a java shop as is a lot of big enterprise
grishka 7mo ago
> The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away. Huh??? Google, the search engine part, is written in Java as far as I know. Yandex uses Java extensively. Odnoklassniki, once second most popular Russian social network, is written in Java. Banks like Java. Android apps are written in Java (and Kotlin, which I consider an abstraction over Java). And that's only what I can remember right away. A sizable chunk of the world runs on Java.
p2detar 7mo ago
> The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away. This can’t be a serious comment. I’d say probably half the world‘s B2B and enterprise runs on Java. Especially in Europe.
victorbjorklund 7mo ago
That is a silly take. The absolute majority of Java devs in the world does not work in spy agencies (sounds like it’s more about your personal network being close to that world)
raverbashing 7mo ago
And you know that they will be using Java 6 just because...
northern-lights 7mo ago
as a counterpoint - Amazon is a Java shop and most of the companies that model themselves after Amazon are also Java shops.

glitchc 7mo ago

The financial market infrastructure heavily relies on Java. Transactions at commercial banks across North America are mostly executed on Java codebases.

bobthepanda 7mo ago

Java is not uncommon. Off the top of my head, a certain rainforest company and a lot of banks and EMR providers use it.

wredcoll 7mo ago
Amazon, among others, write a lot of java, but they want absolutely nothing to do with oracle licenses for java
- bobthepanda 7mo ago
  Right, I just feel like this is a bit over the top > The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away.
  - burnte 7mo ago
    > Right, I just feel like this is a bit over the top Well, the writer said the only Java devs THEY KN OW, not all Java devs.
- tombert 7mo ago
  I worked for a drug discovery company doing Java [1] since we were using Kafka Streams very liberally, but everything was done with the OpenJDK Temurin distribution. It was drilled into our heads on the first day do not install anything from Oracle. I think they were afraid of some weird lawsuit unless they bought an expensive license. I totally get it, but it made me a bit sad because they were even weary of something like GraalVM for some projects where startup time was becoming an issue; I think the Community Edition for GraalVM would have been fine but I think they had this "we don't touch anything with an the Oracle name directly attached with a ten foot pole". Which is totally fair. [1] It's not hard to find which one but I politely ask that you do not post it here in relation to this thread.
  - mort96 7mo ago
    I'm sure GraalVM is nice enough technology but I don't understand why anyone would actively choose to use a JVM from Oracle if they can avoid it.
    - tombert 7mo ago
      The Ahead of Time compilation is pretty nice for some stuff. Generally startup time is significantly improved, so if you're writing command line tools in particular it can be cool.
      - mort96 7mo ago
        Most languages I write are ahead of time compiled with pretty good startup time so it's not really a need I have that I feel GraalVM solves?
        tombert 7mo ago
        Yes but Java has historically had pretty long startup times. If you want to write Java specifically then GraalVM is probably still the best option for AOT.
    - pjmlp 7mo ago
- coredog64 7mo ago
  They have their own OpenJDK distribution (Amazon Corretto)
- pjmlp 7mo ago
  They surely like the work Oracle employees provide to OpenJDK.

sleepybrett 7mo ago

I think that overstates, there is a lot of java in the enterprise still, it's lose share to golang and typescript and in certain cases rust, but it's still around and doing just fine (to my annoyance).

tombert 7mo ago

Apple used Java in a ton of backend stuff. At least the entire backend for iTunes (Jingle) was written in Java and very very small amount of Clojure.

jen20 7mo ago
One only need look at the job postings for Apple to see quite how common Java backend is there.
- butterlesstoast 7mo ago
  Checks out https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/search?search=java&sort=relevance&location=united-states-USA https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/search?search=java&sort=relevan...
- shrikant 7mo ago
  Yeah I can see that, even when a recruiter contacted me a few years back for a data engineering position, they were looking strictly for experience in JVM-based languages.
rbanffy 7mo ago
> Clojure Apple should do more of that - they make cool computers, and should use cool languages.
- tombert 7mo ago
  Yeah, I wish they did more Clojure as well. As far as I could tell, it was kind of snuck in about ~12 years ago, and it kind of grew from there. To be fair, I know people hate on it, but I honestly do kind of think Objective C is kind of a cool language. I think it's ugly but I think the message-passing style semantics are kind of neat.
  - jimbokun 7mo ago
    Adding Smalltalk message passing as an extension to C was very clever and allowed writing very efficient code and dynamic high level UI code in a single language. The semantics were kept clear by the distinctive syntax of message passing. And allowed access to any existing C libraries.

mooreds 7mo ago

My employer is actively hiring java engineers and we don't "take pictures of things from far away". There are vibrant java user's groups all around the world. There are many java community conferences. The most recent redmonk language rankings[0] show java at #3. The world is big :) . 0: https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2025/06/18/language-rankings-1-25/ https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2025/06/18/language-rankings-1-2...

jvanderbot 7mo ago
You're right of course, but we only just met! You're the first of probably many counter examples.

lenerdenator 7mo ago

The question then becomes, does Java warrant the valuation Oracle has when the language itself is mostly FLOSS?

layer8 7mo ago
Oracle effectively still largely controls the evolution of the language and of OpenJDK, and Java is still a registered Oracle trademark. While it could be forked and renamed if necessary (as happened in the javax –> jakarta transition), that would likely end up being quite disruptive and costly. That being said, Oracle’s valuation is based on their huge integrated ecosystem. That they also control Java, while not insignificant, probably only plays a minor role there.
pjmlp 7mo ago
Who do you think pays most of the salaries of people working on OpenJDK?

iamjake648 7mo ago

Interesting, the _majority_ of developers I know write in JVM languages - mostly Kotlin for new stuff at this point. Typically I see folks using the Amazon Corretto java distribution.

geodel 7mo ago
It could mean you know very few developers. > Typically I see folks using the Amazon Corretto java distribution. It means nothing. ~90% of core development of JDK and JVM is done by Oracle employees and it is shared by all distributions by various vendors.
pjmlp 7mo ago
So you actually know a lot of Android developers.

bjord 7mo ago

it's not purely gov work—lots of legacy software (especially outside of the US) is java-based and if you hire an offshore outsourcing company, odds are that they will insist on something java (spring) based, as that's where their experience is

vips7L 7mo ago
Lots of green field apps are Java based too. I just started a new codebase in Java 25.

pjc50 7mo ago

We use Java. We have Oracle blocked at the router (!) to prevent anyone downloading the Oracle JDK and incurring the wrath of Oracle licensing.

rbanffy 7mo ago

> The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away. We all have different circles. I work for a bank and the bulk of the LOB code here is Java (or something that runs under a JVM). There are no Oracle databases as far as I know, but my visibility is limited. Also, Oracle Applications for things like HR.

InsideOutSanta 7mo ago
Yeah, lots of corporate backend code is Java, and Java is a great choice for backend/server code. I've never seen Oracle anywhere, though, not in banks and not in governments. I've mostly seen Postgres and MSSQL and some MongoDB.
- JackFr 7mo ago
  I've been working in Wall St. banks for the past 30 years, and I've never used an Oracle database. The investment banks were all Sybase shops in the 90's, and a bunch of them still are. In my experience those that do move are most likely to go to SQL Server, since its Sybase roots make the transition a little easier. When something has been there for 20+ years switching costs are big.
  - cyberpunk 7mo ago
    I work for a pretty big one and we’ve got an exacc or twelve. Regulatory thing for us, some workloads need production support for the data tier for various boring legal and compliance reasons, so our choices are kida limited to oracle and, these days, mongo, who have made massive inroads to enterprise in the last couple years. Personally, I prefer Mongo.

layer8 7mo ago

Look at who is making OpenJDK distributions besides Oracle: Amazon, Microsoft, Red Hat, IBM, Eclipse, SAP, … It’s being used everywhere.

ghurtado 7mo ago

> The only developers I know who write Java It sounds like your personal anecdote is particularly uninformative then.

prepend 7mo ago
Useful for letting us know that GP has a limited network and situational awareness. I always find these “relative to me” claims not very informative on the internet. But it fun when every once in a while you notice the claimer is Bill Joy or Linus Torvalds or someone where the relativeness holds weight.

losvedir 7mo ago

What? What kind of ridiculous bubble are you in? Isn't Java one of the main languages at Google, Netflix, Amazon, etc?

amiga386 7mo ago

There are probably millions of corporate projects written in Java. One of the reasons Oracle bought Sun Microsystems (who invented Java) was because Oracle itself had written so much middleware crap in Java. Both Java and C#/.NET are super-popular in Enterprise land, with the choice between them mainly being if the enterprise is a Microsoft shop or not. Everything SAP touches is written in Java too, and it's boring old payroll stuff. There's the entire Android user interface with millions of Java-only app developers. Oracle may well be in bed with the spooks, but it's not a Java-specific thing.

nsxwolf 7mo ago

There are literally millions of us that write Java and don't work for the CIA. It's like still in the top 3 of all languages.

bombcar 7mo ago
I was surprised at first to learn Minecraft was a CIA plot and then I thought about it and it all fit together :)

malfist 7mo ago

Amazon is predominantly a java shop as is a lot of big enterprise

grishka 7mo ago

> The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away. Huh??? Google, the search engine part, is written in Java as far as I know. Yandex uses Java extensively. Odnoklassniki, once second most popular Russian social network, is written in Java. Banks like Java. Android apps are written in Java (and Kotlin, which I consider an abstraction over Java). And that's only what I can remember right away. A sizable chunk of the world runs on Java.

p2detar 7mo ago

> The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away. This can’t be a serious comment. I’d say probably half the world‘s B2B and enterprise runs on Java. Especially in Europe.

victorbjorklund 7mo ago

That is a silly take. The absolute majority of Java devs in the world does not work in spy agencies (sounds like it’s more about your personal network being close to that world)

raverbashing 7mo ago

And you know that they will be using Java 6 just because...

northern-lights 7mo ago

as a counterpoint - Amazon is a Java shop and most of the companies that model themselves after Amazon are also Java shops.