Key advantages of Java
The main advantage of Java is the principle “once written, it works everywhere”. This means that software written on one platform will run on other devices as well. In principle, Java is literally able to “sing from every iron”: it is used to create applications for mobile devices, remote processors, wireless modules, sensors, and in general – almost any electrical device. Adaptability is one of the reasons Twitter moved to the JVM.
Java is among the most popular languages on GitHub by number of commits. The language is in demand due to the huge selection of libraries for any task. And the multi-million community is constantly increasing their number.
Thus, Java is constantly evolving both by language creators and its “users”.
Thanks to the variety of libraries, this language is flexible, so it is perfect for implementing new functions. Both for large corporations and smaller companies this is valuable. For example, the flexibility of the language helped Spotify build a set of modules for Apollo microservice development.
Java plays a big role in supporting the Netflix service. Their infrastructure runs on Linux, and video encoding runs on Windows machines. The fact that Java has many open source tools makes monitoring and updating data in different environments much easier.
International fintech company LMAX uses Java to make stock exchange transactions run with minimal latency. In general, many of the largest companies have backend parts written in Java to address security, portability and performance issues.
Android development
The fact that Google once chose Java for Android development certainly fueled interest in the language among developers. Today, it is the most popular operating system, and almost all mobile applications for it are written in Java.
Cloud projects
Migration to the cloud is an irreversible process in the global market. Companies are moving everything from data storage and individual services to the entire IT infrastructure to cloud platforms. And Java has become the most popular programming language for corporate development in the cloud.
Programming tools
Java was used to create popular software development tools: IntelliJ Idea, Eclipse, Netbeans. As well as SAP business objects, the Jira bug tracking system (which is also used as a project management system), and much more.
Working with Big Data
There is an opinion that Python and R are more suitable for working with big data. But data analytics is a separate planet. Different languages are used for different tasks and Java is among them.