Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2025. Read them in this 17th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Catherine Edelveis, Developer Advocate at BellSoft
Although Java celebrates its 30th anniversary next year, it remains among the most popular programming languages. The reason is that the platform continuously adapts to the needs of developers and enterprises running Java workloads.
The adoption of what Java ecosystem and newer JDK versions have to offer will help you enhance your project’s performance and preserve a competitive edge in the ever-changing IT landscape. Here are three trends that the Java platform will likely respond to in the coming 2025.
A shift towards sustainable resource use
Green computing, which is a practice of environmentally sustainable software development and utilization, is bound to transform from a mere buzzword to clearly defined corporate initiatives. In terms of deploying and running applications, it will mean creating smaller instances in the cloud, adopting a scale-to-zero approach that allows for scaling services up and down flexibly depending on the traffic, and implementing techniques for better CPU utilization.
In the past, the Java platform was notorious for increased memory footprint and slow startup. However, some novel solutions and features help Java to combat these obstacles and compete with languages such as Go and Python. As such, Java applications can start in under one second with GraalVM Native Image or the Coordinated Restore at Checkpoint Project. The Leyden Project, which is currently under active development, is also aimed at eliminating this issue. Lightweight base images with Alpine or Alpaquita can reduce the size of a container image with a Java application by up to 30%, and virtual threads may help to achieve better CPU utilization for multithreaded code.
In 2025, we will witness a broader adoption of these and other solutions aimed at optimizing memory footprint and startup times of Java applications as companies strive to make their Java-based projects more resource-efficient.
A more tangible adoption of AI in Java development
The fear that Artificial Intelligence will take away developers’ jobs might be slightly stretched. Still, it would be safe to say that not implementing AI will affect a company’s competitive performance.
Major Java frameworks enable the creation of AI-based Java applications and the integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into existing Java programs. In addition, this year saw the rise of frameworks tailored to making calls to LLMs or running LLMs locally or in production.
In 2025, a greater portion of enterprises will integrate AI into their projects to some extent, aiming to enhance user experience by providing more personalized content as well as immediate and meaningful reactions to users’ queries.
The growing popularity of new platforms
Intel and AMD’s dominance in the world of server-class software is fading as these two giants are getting edged out by ARM servers. For a long time, ARM processors have been primarily used in smartphones and embedded systems, but they started conquering other fields, such as cloud computing, thanks to their power efficiency and outstanding performance. Now, ARM-based systems are used by Amazon, Azure, and other cloud providers.
But apart from ARM, another player in town should be reckoned with, namely RISC-V. Both RISC-V and ARM are based on the RISC architecture, but the key difference between them is in the business model. RISC-V is open and free, which means that anyone can build their own RISC-V processors, harvesting cost-efficiency and accelerated development.
In 2025, the adoption of ARM-based servers and RISC-V processors will continue in leaps and bounds. The great news is that Java is compatible with both platforms, as there are ports of OpenJDK to Aarch32, Aarch64, and RISC-V. So, choosing a JDK runtime that natively supports both platforms, for instance, Liberica JDK, will enable you to boost the performance of your Java workloads and achieve long-term cost-efficiency.
##
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Catherine Edelveis
Catherine has been developing Java applications for several years before she shifted her focus to education and developer advocacy. She currently works as a Developer Advocate at BellSoft.
