Who uses Java?

[Jon Harrop]

I have heard many times before that Java is the world's most common
programming language. I checked this out and it certainly seems to be true:
there are a huge number of Java programmers out there. However, I have no
idea what exactly they build with Java. The only software I have ever used
that is written in Java is (to the best of my knowledge) OpenOffice, Tribal
Trouble and Eclipse. And I only used Eclipse to develop Java code...

I have one friend who is a bioinformatician and uses Java exclusively. I met
another friend recently and he corroborated my view, saying that he didn't
know anyone who used Java and had never come across an employer who wanted
a Java programmer (he is currently looking at jobs in quantitative finance
but his recent background is in web analytics).

So where is Java used in industry?

 

[Peter Duniho]

[...]
So where is Java used in industry?

Just a warning to would-be respondents to this post:

My impression of Harrop is one of a religious follower of the F# language
and borderline troll. Any regular in this newsgroup already knows the
widespread use of Java, and it's my opinion, based on observation of
Harrop's behavior in the C# newsgroup, that he's not genuinely interested
in any true answer to his question. Instead, this will likely devolve
into some attempt to indict Java as not being appropriate or useful,
proposing F# as the "right" language.

I recommend spending at least a little time with Google Groups reviewing
his past posts before you jump in to answer his question here. If after
that, you still feel he's got a serious, worthwhile question, by all means
reply in kind.

Pete

 

[Jeff Higgins]

I have heard many times before that Java is the world's most common
programming language. I checked this out and it certainly seems to be
true:
there are a huge number of Java programmers out there. However, I have no
idea what exactly they build with Java. The only software I have ever used
that is written in Java is (to the best of my knowledge) OpenOffice,
Tribal
Trouble and Eclipse. And I only used Eclipse to develop Java code...

I have one friend who is a bioinformatician and uses Java exclusively. I
met
another friend recently and he corroborated my view, saying that he didn't
know anyone who used Java and had never come across an employer who wanted
a Java programmer (he is currently looking at jobs in quantitative finance
but his recent background is in web analytics).

So where is Java used in industry?

Will you reiterate your academic credentials?

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

I have heard many times before that Java is the world's most common
programming language. I checked this out and it certainly seems to be true:
there are a huge number of Java programmers out there. However, I have no
idea what exactly they build with Java. The only software I have ever used
that is written in Java is (to the best of my knowledge) OpenOffice, Tribal
Trouble and Eclipse. And I only used Eclipse to develop Java code...

I have one friend who is a bioinformatician and uses Java exclusively. I met
another friend recently and he corroborated my view, saying that he didn't
know anyone who used Java and had never come across an employer who wanted
a Java programmer (he is currently looking at jobs in quantitative finance
but his recent background is in web analytics).

So where is Java used in industry?

www.dice.com

search on Java and start reading !

Arne

 

[Jon Harrop]

Will you reiterate your academic credentials?

BA, MA, MSci, PhD in natural sciences (physics and chemistry) from the
University of Cambridge.

 

[Jon Harrop]

www.dice.com

search on Java and start reading !

Thanks for the link.

Just ploughing through a few of these they all seem to be in the US. Is that
representative of Java or just of this website? Does Java have a higher
market share of languages in the US than it does in Europe?

There are lots of foreign keywords: JSF, EJB, Struts, JSP, RDBMS, ESRI
GIS/ArcIMS, ArcSDE, JDBC, Spring, Hibernate, iSeries...

I get the impression that many are database and XML related and few are GUI
related. That surprises me: I thought cross-platform GUIs were a major
selling point of Java.

Has anyone collated overall demographics on who programs in Java, where and
what sorts of programs they write?

 

[Karl]

[...]
So where is Java used in industry?

Just a warning to would-be respondents to this post:

My impression of Harrop is one of a religious follower of the F# language
and borderline troll. Any regular in this newsgroup already knows the
widespread use of Java, and it's my opinion, based on observation of
Harrop's behavior in the C# newsgroup, that he's not genuinely interested
in any true answer to his question. Instead, this will likely devolve
into some attempt to indict Java as not being appropriate or useful,
proposing F# as the "right" language.

I recommend spending at least a little time with Google Groups reviewing
his past posts before you jump in to answer his question here. If after
that, you still feel he's got a serious, worthwhile question, by all means
reply in kind.

F#? Now that's a new one on me. We certainly have a plethora of ways to
program computers, eh? Having professionally developed in ASM, C, C++, Java
and C#, I must say Java is my personal favorite, but that's just me. I have
my reasons, but they might not be appropriate for all applications.

One language seems to become dominant every few years, but it really doesn't
matter what anyone says. It usually happens organically, and there isn't
anything anyone can do about it.

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

So where is Java used in industry?

Matlab uses it. Mathematic uses it. I think Maple may be using it as
well. Between the three of them, that's an awful lot of usage of Java.

Google uses it in part (along with a bajillion other languages).

All applets use Java; therefore, many online games use Java.

The IDA group at NRL uses it exclusively. I believe the U.S. government
and military use it heavily.

In summary: more or less in all fields.

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

There are lots of foreign keywords: JSF, EJB, Struts, JSP, RDBMS, ESRI
GIS/ArcIMS, ArcSDE, JDBC, Spring, Hibernate, iSeries...

Wow. You really don't know anything about Java, do you?

I get the impression that many are database and XML related and few are GUI
related. That surprises me: I thought cross-platform GUIs were a major
selling point of Java.

Try calling ESRI GIS not GUI related. If you don't know, GIS software is
heavily used in... just about every environmental science field and
every civil planner's office?

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Thanks for the link.

Just ploughing through a few of these they all seem to be in the US. Is that
representative of Java or just of this website?

It is a US job site, so surprisingly it has only US jobs.

You will need to find the similar job sites for other countries.

I can give you one for Denmark www.itjobworld.dk - but it need someone
that knows the country to know what the right web site for IT jobs
are.

Does Java have a higher
market share of languages in the US than it does in Europe?

I don't think so.

I would expect countries with many small companies to use a bit less
Java than countries with fewer big companies though.

There are lots of foreign keywords: JSF, EJB, Struts, JSP, RDBMS, ESRI
GIS/ArcIMS, ArcSDE, JDBC, Spring, Hibernate, iSeries...

You can look them up in Wikipedia. It is basically either standards
or products with some relevance to the Java world.

I get the impression that many are database and XML related and few are GUI
related. That surprises me: I thought cross-platform GUIs were a major
selling point of Java.

Most Java GUI's are web GUI's.

Desktop GUI apps are made (the keywords are: AWT, Swing and SWT), but
web GUI's are more used.

Arne

 

[Mark Space]

All applets use Java; therefore, many online games use Java.

Most web games seem to be written in Flash these days, and generally
Flash seems to be displacing Java Applets as the "web desktop"
programming language of choice. I wish this were not true, but that
appears to be the case.

 

[Jon Harrop]

F#? Now that's a new one on me. We certainly have a plethora of ways to
program computers, eh? Having professionally developed in ASM, C, C++,
Java and C#, I must say Java is my personal favorite, but that's just me.
I have my reasons, but they might not be appropriate for all applications.

One language seems to become dominant every few years, but it really
doesn't matter what anyone says. It usually happens organically, and there
isn't anything anyone can do about it.

F# is largely about interactive programming (like MATLAB), native interop to
Microsoft products via .NET (like Excel) and a very high-level programming
language (first-class lexical closures, pattern matching over algebraic
datatypes and so on). Technical users are a primary market and they
conventionally use Fortran/C and MATLAB/Mathematica rather than Java.

I used to use C++ and Mathematica for technical computing. Now I'm writing
software for technical users in OCaml, C# and F#. I keep toying with the
idea of diversifying into Java.

My only direct exposure to Java has been writing OCaml code to generate
100kLOC of (unidiomatic) Java bindings to XenServer a couple of years ago,
so that Java programmers could use the product. I did try to get into Java
programming then but found it extremely difficult.

 

[Jon Harrop]

Matlab uses it. Mathematic uses it. I think Maple may be using it as
well. Between the three of them, that's an awful lot of usage of Java.

Ah yes, of course. I worked at Wolfram Research when they were building
their Java stuff and saw some demos of it but never saw the final thing. I
believe they have some kind of GUI builder that targets either Java or the
JVM directly?

The MathWorks were kind enough to give me a free copy of MATLAB because I am
a book author. Where is the Java in MATLAB? They seem to have a MATLAB to
Java compiler:

http://www.mathworks.com/products/javabuilder/

Is there a more integral part of MATLAB that is written in Java?

Google uses it in part (along with a bajillion other languages).

Is it all behind the scenes?

The IDA group at NRL uses it exclusively.

I don't know who they are, sorry.

I believe the U.S. government and military use it heavily.

Do you know what they use it for?

 

[Jeff Higgins]

So where is Java used in industry?

Ask Ms. Ann
<www.trinityconsultancy.com>

 

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

I get the impression that many are database and XML related and few are GUI
related. That surprises me: I thought cross-platform GUIs were a major
selling point of Java.

I won't pretend to know what everybody is doing, but from where I sit,
the primary advantage of Java is cross-platform *server* software (i.e.
J2EE servers or web containers) running on anything from low-end PC's
to heavy server iron.

You then make rich clients for your server application, but they are
typically for a specific customer who are happy to specify, e.g.,
clients to run on Windows with a screen size of 1024x768.

/L

 

[Jon Harrop]

It is a US job site, so surprisingly it has only US jobs.

Ah, ok.

I don't think so.

I would expect countries with many small companies to use a bit less
Java than countries with fewer big companies though.

I see. So Java is used predominantly in large companies for database work
and (guessing) intranet web services. Presumably that might be anything
from software to run vets practices to airline ticket reservation systems
and so forth?

You can look them up in Wikipedia. It is basically either standards
or products with some relevance to the Java world.
Ok.


Most Java GUI's are web GUI's.

I see.

Desktop GUI apps are made (the keywords are: AWT, Swing and SWT), but
web GUI's are more used.

What are the relevant keywords for web GUIs?

Many thanks,

 

[Lew]

Do you know what they use it for?

Typical non-military uses are to drive web sites for the public to submit
forms such as mandatory filings or applications for benefits, and to provide
the middleware to interact with big-iron COBOL systems. There is quite a bit
of activity in web services, also, much of which is on Java Enterprise Edition
platforms. Typical uses include interagency communication of shared case
information.

Sniffing around the Web I've also found major corporations that use Java for
their web applications. IBM comes to mind.

Just searching now for Java-based web sites, I found www.nyc.gov
<http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/?front_door=true>

 

[Mark Thornton]

I have heard many times before that Java is the world's most common
programming language. I checked this out and it certainly seems to be true:
there are a huge number of Java programmers out there. However, I have no
idea what exactly they build with Java. The only software I have ever used
that is written in Java is (to the best of my knowledge) OpenOffice, Tribal
Trouble and Eclipse. And I only used Eclipse to develop Java code...

I have one friend who is a bioinformatician and uses Java exclusively. I met
another friend recently and he corroborated my view, saying that he didn't
know anyone who used Java and had never come across an employer who wanted
a Java programmer (he is currently looking at jobs in quantitative finance
but his recent background is in web analytics).

So where is Java used in industry?

My company (http://www.optrak.co.uk) produces vehicle routing software
which is written largely in Java. The bits which aren't in Java are for
historical reasons and will eventually disappear.

Mark Thornton

 

[motosauro]

What are the relevant keywords for web GUIs?

Many thanks,

jsp, jsf

 

[Jon Harrop]

I won't pretend to know what everybody is doing, but from where I sit,
the primary advantage of Java is cross-platform *server* software (i.e.
J2EE servers or web containers) running on anything from low-end PC's
to heavy server iron.

That's interesting. I hadn't thought that being cross-platform would be an
advantage for servers. Is that because you don't want to be tied to MS? Are
there any Linux-only competitors?