Three Decades Later, Developers Are Still Choosing Java

Oracle recently launched Java 25, the latest version of one of the most widely used enterprise programming languages. According to the 2025 Stack Overflow survey, Java is the seventh most popular programming language, ranking below Python and SQL.

In a recent exclusive conversation with AIM, Chad Arimura, vice-president of developer relations at Oracle, discussed the state of Java, its future in the AI era, and why enterprises continue to trust it after 30 years.

The Renaissance of Java

“We’re seeing a Java renaissance,” said Arimura. With billions of active JVMs (Java Virtual Machines) globally, Java continues to power mission-critical workloads across industries, he said, emphasising that innovation has only accelerated. 

Projects such as Loom, Panama, Valhalla, Amber, Leydon, and the newest Babylon are pushing the boundaries of Java in terms of performance, concurrency, memory efficiency, and language design. These initiatives ensure that Java remains a powerful and versatile platform, ready to meet the demands of modern enterprise and AI-driven applications.

Java in the era of generative AI

Java 25 is a Long-Term Support (LTS) release, which Oracle provides every two years.“Java 25 is…production-ready and battle-tested. The difference is that 25 is an LTS release, which means years of security and performance updates,” Arimura clarified.

Moreover, the latest release ships with 18 JDK Enhancement Proposals (JEPs), including ahead-of-time profiling and faster startup improvements under Project Leyden. 

Arimura noted that the Helidon framework, without any code modifications, ran 72–74% faster after upgrading from Java 21 to Java 25.

Java in the AI Era

Given the surge of AI adoption, many wonder where Java fits in a Python-heavy ecosystem. Arimura believes the answer lies in the enterprise base.

“Hundreds of thousands of companies run on Java. Their entire company is based on it. They don’t want to reskill their developers or add Python sidecars. They want to access AI directly from their Java applications,” he said.

Oracle also has a Java plugin for Visual Studio Code (VS Code), which is gaining popularity, with nearly 4 million downloads and high user ratings. Developers are increasingly using it for AI-related tasks through tools like Oracle Code Assist, Copilot, and Cursor. 

Oracle is working to make VS Code a strong platform for Java development, while its new website, learn.java, offers a structured and beginner-friendly path for students and new learners.

Moreover, Java now offers a browser-based playground on dev.java, allowing users to write and run code without installing JDK or an IDE. The new shared snippets feature lets students and teachers share code links that can be executed instantly in the browser.

Beyond learning, Oracle is bridging this gap through integrations like OCI’s Java SDK, LangChain4J, and Spring AI, making it seamless to embed generative AI and language models into existing Java applications.

“Java is a blue-collar language. It’s versatile, it’s battle-tested, and it just works. You can take what an LLM gives you and put it into production confidently. That’s not the case for most languages,” Arimura stressed.

Why Enterprises Still Trust Java 

Despite the rise of newer languages like Python and Rust, banks, governments, and enterprises continue to rely on Java for several reasons. According to Oracle, the platform’s reliability and security remain paramount. 

“The Java platform is extremely robust, reliable, and secure, which is number one for enterprises,” said Bernard Traversat, vice-president of software development, Oracle.

Backward compatibility is another key factor. “If you invested millions into a Java app 10 years ago, it can still run today with minor modifications,” added Traversat. 

He mentioned that the cost of finding and hiring Java developers is low because there is a very broad ecosystem of Java developers that enterprises can find and hire at a reasonable cost.

India Loves Java 

Sharath Chander, senior director, Java product management, Oracle, said that globally, over 10 million developers are skilled in building mission-critical Java applications. India, in particular, is a stronghold of Java talent. “There are 14 Java user groups across cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, and Delhi, representing nearly 100,000 developers. India is a critical innovation hub for Java,” said Chander.

These professionals hail from major organisations and premier institutes and actively participate in the user groups to share best practices, collaborate on use cases, and improve their skills, Chander added.

Beyond AI: Post-Quantum Security

While AI dominates headlines, Oracle is also preparing for the post-quantum cryptography (PQC) era. 

“Enterprise customers are very sensitive to ensuring communication channels remain secure. We’ve been evolving Java’s security for 30 years, from TLS (Transport Layer Security) 1.0 to TLS 1.3, and PQC is the next step,” Traversat explained.

With Java 25, Oracle is reinforcing the language’s legacy while ensuring it evolves to meet modern demands, AI, cloud-native workloads, and post-quantum security.

As Arimura put it: “Java is not just alive; it’s thriving. It remains the most popular enterprise language in the world, and the innovation pipeline has never been richer.”

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