Java Use on the Rise

The actual use of Java by developers outside North America has increased in the past six months, according to the Spring International Developer Opinion Survey by Evans Marketing Services (EMS).

The survey, which measures a broad range of opinions, attitudes, and usage patterns amongst developers in more than 60 countries outside North America, reports that 40 percent of the respondents in April 1999 are using Java. This number compares to 30 percent in the survey fielded in September 1998. More than half (58 percent) of the same developers predict they will use the language during the next year.

Developers in North America have long predicted an increase in Java use that has never come to fruition, according to Janel Garvin, Director of Research at EMS.

“One of the most obvious patterns we’ve seen in Java use in North America has been the tendency for developers to predict significantly increased use of Java in the future, but for the actual usage numbers to remain flat,” Garvin said. “This is the first significant increase in actual Java usage we’ve seen, and it’s interesting that it is occurring outside North America. We believe that Java use in North America has been depressed by the continual controversies surrounding the language and intense media coverage of those controversies.”

The number of developers using Java internationally contrasts with the most recent EMS North American survey fielded in March 1999. In that survey, 43 percent of North American developers reported using Java to some degree, the same percentage that reported using it in September of 1998, even though a 60 percent increase in use was predicted.