The results of the 2022 Jakarta EE Developer Survey are very telling about the current state of the enterprise Java developer community. They point to increased confidence about Jakarta EE and highlight how far Jakarta EE has grown over the past few years.
Strong Turnout Helps Drive Future of Jakarta EE
The fifth annual survey is one of the longest running and best-respected surveys of its kind in the industry. This year’s turnout was fantastic: From March 9 to May 6, a total of 1,439 developers responded.
This is great for two reasons. First, obviously, these results help inform the Java ecosystem stakeholders about the requirements, priorities and perceptions of enterprise developer communities. The more people we hear from, the better picture we get of what the community wants and needs. That makes it much easier for us to make sure the work we’re doing is aligned with what our community is looking for.
The other reason is that it helps us better understand how the cloud native Java world is progressing. By looking at what community members are using and adopting, what their top goals are and what their plans are for adoption, we can better understand not only what we should be working on today, but tomorrow and for the future of Jakarta EE.
Findings Indicate Growing Adoption and Rising Expectations
Some of the survey’s key findings include:
- Jakarta EE is the basis for the top frameworks used for building cloud native applications.
- The top three frameworks for building cloud native applications, respectively, are Spring/Spring Boot, Jakarta EE and MicroProfile, though Spring/Spring Boot lost ground this past year. It’s important to note that Spring/SpringBoot relies on Jakarta EE developments for its operation and is not competitive with Jakarta EE. Both are critical ingredients to the healthy enterprise Java ecosystem.
- Jakarta EE 9/9.1 usage increased year-over-year by 5%.
- Java EE 8, Jakarta EE 8, and Jakarta EE 9/9.1 hit the mainstream with 81% adoption.
- While over a third of respondents planned to adopt, or already had adopted Jakarta EE 9/9.1, nearly a fifth of respondents plan to skip Jakarta EE 9/9.1 altogether and adopt Jakarta EE 10 once it becomes available.
- Most respondents said they have migrated to Jakarta EE already or planned to do so within the next 6-24 months.
- The top three community priorities for Jakarta EE are:
- Native integration with Kubernetes (same as last year)
- Better support for microservices (same as last year)
- Faster support from existing Java EE/Jakarta EE or cloud vendors (new this year)
Two of the results, when combined, highlight something interesting:
- 19% of respondents planned to skip Jakarta EE 9/9.1 and go straight to 10 once it’s available
- The new community priority — faster support from existing Java EE/Jakarta EE or cloud vendors — really shows the growing confidence the community has in the ecosystem
After all, you wouldn’t wait for a later version and skip the one that’s already available, unless you were confident that the newer version was not only going to be coming out on a relatively reliable timeline, but that it was going to be an improvement.
And this growing hunger from the community for faster support really speaks to how far the ecosystem has come. When we release a new version, like when we released Jakarta EE 9, it takes some time for the technology implementers to build the product based on those standards or specifications. The community is becoming more vocal in requesting those implementers to be more agile and quickly pick up the new versions. That’s definitely an indication that developer demand for Jakarta EE products is growing in a healthy way.
Learn More
If you’d like to learn more about the project, there are several Jakarta EE mailing lists to sign up for. You can also join the conversation on Slack. And if you want to get involved, start by choosing a project, sign up for its mailing list and start communicating with the team.
