Java developers are a dynamic, ever changing bunch.
Over the past couple of weeks, I ran an industry survey here on Baeldung, to see how Java 8, Spring 4 and the newer Spring Boot are adopted and used in the industry.
We got over 1500 answers to the survey – leading to some very cool numbers:
1. Java 8 Adoption
Let’s start with Java, where we numbers are as follows:
-
38% – Java 8
-
48.5% – Java 7
-
13.5% – Java 6
The community is clearly moving to Java 8 at a very fast pace – a Typesafe survey had Java 8 adoption hovering at around 26% back in October of 2014.
We are now at almost 40% adoption in May of 2015 – only 7 months later – which is quite impressive.
2. Spring 4 Adoption
Spring 4 has been released in December of 2013. Let’s see how much it has been adopted across the industry today:
-
65% – Spring 4
-
32.5% – Spring 3
-
2.5% – Spring 2
The numbers are very clear – the ecosystem is moving to Spring 4.
Back in June of 2014 – almost 1 year ago – adoption looked quite different:
- 37% – Spring 4
- 57% – Spring 3
- 6% – Spring 2
3. Spring Boot Adoption
Finally – Spring Boot was released back in April of 2014. Let’s see it has been adopted over this past year:
-
34% – Using Spring Boot Now
-
66% – Not Yet
4. Conclusion
The earlier releases – Java 7 and Spring 3 – are clearly on a downward trend but do have a solid part of the market. What’s interesting though is that the older versions – Java 6 and Spring 2 are nearly gone or down to single digits.
Overall, it looks like the pace of adoption is strong for both Java 8 and the newer Spring technologies.
