It’s honestly the only programming language that will get its 1996 version compared to a new 2025 version of another language. And the only language that will be criticized by someone who last used it in 2006.
> And the only language that will be criticized by someone who last used it in 2006.
You don't sound like you work with Java. I know for a fact that even some FANGs, with their army of software engineers, still use Java8 for most of their Java projects.
Historically an upgrade could cause issues if the code or dependencies used undocumented functionality (like Byte code manipulation) or calls to native code, or the transitions to modules in v9. Upgrades after version 11 should be less "risky" and be easier to argue to management.
From what I can tell, there are 4 main reasons why some don't upgrade.
1. They have legacy software and are afraid of breaking it, sometimes with good reasons.
2. The devs don't know or care enough about the new versions to bother with it. Noone is promoted because of an upgrade. Work to live, and don't live to work
3. The ones who don't have buy in from management to spend time fixing something that works
4. They are using version 11+ that should be much safer to upgrade than earlier versions, but they are still in the mindset of 1 or 2 above
There have been huge improvements not only in the language itself, but also performance and memory use. They could save money if they upgrade, but in some cases this is acceptable because they can make more money by spending time on a new feature, than an upgrade.
In my last 3 workplaces, they usually tried to use the latest LTS versions. But to be honest, some of the services were in maintenance mode and we didn't get enough benefits to upgrade, so we were sometimes falling behind. Today we have a mix of v17 and v21. Anyone can upgrade anytime they want but noone cares about a service that you seldom work with. I feel kind of bad for that, but not enough to bother. I focus mainly on the services that I work with daily, and make sure they are using the latest versions
> That's debatable, and even if we blindly assume that then it's debatable whether the upgrade justifies the gains
This is not debatable. It’s a factual truth. Every single actual performance review concludes that modern Java vastly out performs the decade old Java 8 runtime.
For an example here is a quote from Hazelcast when comparing performance of modern Java on data heavy workloads [0]:
> JDK 8 is an antiquated runtime. The default Parallel collector enters huge Full GC pauses and the G1, although having less frequent Full GCs, is stuck in an old version that uses just one thread to perform it, resulting in even longer pauses. Even on a moderate heap of 12 GB, the pauses were exceeding 20 seconds for Parallel and a full minute for G1. The ConcurrentMarkSweep collector is strictly worse than G1 in all scenarios, and its failure mode are multi-minute Full GC pauses.
This is from 2020 and the gap has only gotten wider.
I work in Java every day and have upgraded my entire companies fleet of services to Java 21. FANGs are nothing special. And every actual survey shows that there are as many people on a runtime > 8 as there are people on 8:
> And every actual survey shows that there are as many people on a runtime > 8 as there are people on 8:
I don't think you even bothered to read the sources you're quoting, and you're just trying to make baseless assertions.
The very first question on JetBrain's survey is "Which versions of Java do you regularly use?", and 50% answered Java 8 with around 2% mentioning Java 7 and 1% answering Java 6. On top of that, Java11 alone comprised around 38%.
And you're talking about Java21? It doesn't even register in the survey at all.
I'm not talking about Java 21 when referring to that data, I was refuting your baseless claim that I don't work in Java. I don't think you even bothered to actually read or comprehend my comment.
The data there clearly shows that the ecosystem has as many users running a modern version. Which directly counters your assertion that everyone is just running 8.
