Java Development in 2025: Evolving Priorities and Persistent Challenges

If you haven't seen the latest Java developer productivity report from Perforce, you should check it out. Written by Perforce CTO Rod Cope and developer tools exec Jeff Michael, the "2025 Java Developer Productivity Report " reveals a landscape undergoing significant shifts, particularly in hiring trends, tooling budgets, and the adoption of new Java versions. Although enterprises continue to prioritize Java for their mission-critical applications, the report's authors found, economic headwinds and the complexities of modern development environments are pushing teams to do more with less.

The report was based on an anonymous survey conducted between September 2024 and January 2025 that received 731 responses. According to the authors, most respondents listed their role as developer (62%), but this year’s survey saw more respondents in leadership roles compared with 2024, including team lead (19%), director/manager (6%), and vice president/executive (4%).

Headcount and Budget: A Sign of the Times
One of the most telling takeaways from this year's report is the cooling of Java hiring. In 2024, 60% of companies planned to add Java developers, the authors found. That's a number that has dropped to 51% in 2025. Similarly, the percentage of companies planning to increase their developer tool budgets has fallen from 42% in 2024 to 34% this year. Those numbers underscore what appears to be a tightening in development spending, a trend reflective of broader economic concerns.

Interestingly, larger enterprises (1,000+ employees) appear more resilient in this environment. 58% of respondents from enterprise-sized companies still plan to increase their Java headcount, and 36% intend to boost their developer tool budgets, they found. Those numbers are only slightly down from 2024. This suggests that, although budgets may be tightening overall, major enterprises continue to prioritize investment in Java talent and tooling.

JDK Upgrades: The LTS Migration is in Full Swing
Another key trend surfaced in this report is the accelerated shift toward long-term support (LTS) versions of Java. A majority of respondents report using Java 17 (61%) and Java 21 (45%), marking a significant departure from the era where Java 8 and Java 11 dominated. This change can be attributed to Oracle’s updated release cadence, the authors concluded, which offers new LTS versions every two years, and pricing model adjustments that are nudging organizations toward newer, supported versions.

Notably, many organizations continue to use unsupported Oracle distributions, with 35% still on Java 8 and 32% on Java 11. However, given the industry's increasing focus on security, compliance, and performance, it seems likely that businesses still on these older versions will make the leap to Java 17 or Java 21 sooner rather than later, the report suggests.

The IDE Shake-Up: VS Code Gains Ground
One of the more surprising shifts in this year’s report is the growing adoption of Visual Studio Code (VS Code) among Java developers. While IntelliJ IDEA remains the dominant IDE (84%), VS Code has now overtaken Eclipse as the second most-used IDE, with 31% of respondents using it, compared to Eclipse’s 28%.

The increased adoption of VS Code likely stems from its integration with AI-powered coding assistants and its lightweight, extensible nature. Developers are also increasingly using multiple IDEs. 42% of respondents reported using more than one IDE, with many IntelliJ IDEA users also leveraging VS Code for certain tasks. This suggests a growing trend toward IDE specialization, where developers choose tools based on specific workflows rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Remote Development and Cloud Adoption: Productivity vs. Latency
With 51% of respondents working in remote or containerized development environments, cloud-based Java development is clearly on the rise, the authors concluded. However, this transition is not without challenges. Redeploy times in cloud environments remain a major productivity bottleneck, with 27% of developers experiencing redeploys of 10+ minutes. That's a stark contrast with the sub-two-minute redeploy times common in local environments.

Interestingly, cloud provider choice plays a role in these delays. 60% of AWS users reported redeploy times of five minutes or longer, whereas Microsoft Azure (53%) and Google Cloud Platform (43%) fared slightly better. This could indicate that companies need to consider not just cost and features when choosing a cloud provider but also the impact on developer efficiency, the authors warned

Microservices and Modular Architectures: A Balancing Act
Microservices continue to be the preferred architecture for 64% of respondents, but the enthusiasm surrounding microservices has tempered. A growing number of organizations are opting for hybrid approaches, such as modular monoliths (24%) and miniservices (19%), suggesting that developers are learning from past struggles with microservices complexity.

One revealing statistic: 43% of companies have fully transitioned to microservices, but 41% are still in the process, and 2% are actively reverting back. This suggests that, although microservices remain an attractive option, implementation challenges continue to push teams toward alternative, more manageable architectures.

AI in Java Development: The New Normal
AI-powered coding tools are no longer a novelty. They’re becoming a staple in Java development. Only 12% of respondents reported not using AI tools, while another 12% said their companies prohibit AI use. The rest? They're embracing AI-powered assistance, with GitHub Copilot (42%) and ChatGPT (52%) being the most commonly used AI tools.

Developers are primarily leveraging AI for code completion (60%) and refactoring (39%), with growing adoption for debugging, documentation generation, and automated testing. However, concerns about AI accuracy and security remain, particularly for enterprise developers, who show a clear preference for development-specific AI tools over generic AI chatbots.

Final Thoughts: Productivity in an Era of Constraints
The "2025 Java Developer Productivity Report "paints a picture of an industry facing economic constraints, cloud development challenges, and the growing complexity of modern architectures. But the report also highlights opportunities for teams willing to embrace AI, optimize their tooling, and strategically navigate their cloud and architecture choices."

"While economic uncertainty remains, the value of investing in Java remains steadfast as the language celebrates its 30th birthday this year, Cope wrote. "In a development world where languages rise and fall in popularity rapidly, Java has established itself as a stable backbone of enterprise applications across industries."

Perforce's JRebel is a leading Java development tool.

Posted by John K. Waters on March 4, 2025