Ben Evans Grades His 2019 Java Predictions

In 2018, Ben Evans made several predictions about the Java landscape for 2019, including the adoption of Java 11, which saw about 5% uptake by mid-year, aligning with his forecast. He anticipated limited migration from Java 8 to Java 11, with more new projects starting on Java 11, and noted that Graal, a new JIT compiler, was not yet widely adopted. OpenJDK surpassed expectations in becoming the market leader for Java runtimes, particularly for Java 11, as enterprises moved away from Oracle JDK due to support costs. Evans accurately predicted that Java 12 and 13 would be released on schedule but see minimal production use, while value types did not ship as a preview in Java 13, and Kotlin saw modest growth, primarily remaining popular in Android development. Overall, Evans expressed satisfaction with his predictions, acknowledging that the primary miss was underestimating the shift to OpenJDK over Oracle Java 11.