At the start of this week, JavaOne 2015 began its commencement by celebrating the 20th anniversary of Java’s mass usage and explaining the changes to come.

With over 10 million developers currently utilizing it, Java branded software and web development has grown to finally be rated as the number 1 most popular platform amongst today’s developers, so this gathering was no small deal.

As the keynote progressed, these highlights were mentioned:

• Java’s modern success is highly credited to the growth and expansion of the following: Java Enterprise Edition (EE) in large business enterprise applications, Java Standard Edition (SE) ingrained in our everyday desktop use, and Java Micro Edition (ME) embedding in many physical devices like as printers and other common physical technologies available to consumers.

• Java software development is also commonly found in the cloud. The Senior Principal Product Manager at Oracle announced that two different Oracle cloud services are available for use by developers: Java SE Cloud Service and the Oracle Developer Cloud Service. Oracle’s Developer Cloud Service makes it so that we can automatically create a DevOps platform of operation. This is made possible with tools for source-code administration and continuous integration.

• The recent boom in the Internet of Things is likely the reason that Java ME has became as widely used as it is today amongst Java application developers. With such vast implementation on IoT devices in modern times, it is highly predicted that the Java ME will continue to be the platform of choice for java application development on physical devices in the future.

Changes to come

As mentioned at JavaOne, when Java 9 appears in 2016, the biggest and most anticipated innovation they’ve yet to be being called modularity.

One of the main functions of modularity for Java software development will be to allow for vastly improved ability to manage the large and largest software projects that are dependent on extensive libraries to function. The keynote mentioned the following on how modularity will function to achieve this.

The Java Language Architect at Oracle described the key innovations planned for implementation in Java 9:

·         Project Valhalla, which will create all new value types that will lead to variables in memory holders that effectively uses less memory overall while creating faster access opportunities.

·         Project Panama is the project name given to the initiative by Java to fully integrate their systems with other programs that are written in native languages like C or C++.

You can learn more about Valhalla and Panama here.

Java modularity is indeed an exciting topic we’re all looking forward learning more about it and how Java application development plans to grow with the Internet of Things in the coming years.

Image credit: https://www.oracle.com/javaone/register/index.html