2021 JVM Ecosystem Report Highlights Java Version Adoption, IDE Preferences, Build Tools, and Framework Dominance

The JVM Ecosystem Report 2021, conducted over six weeks in early 2021, gathered responses from more than 2,000 Java developers to assess the state of the JVM ecosystem.

While Java 8 remains widely used, the survey shows a clear migration trend: 61.5% of respondents now run Java 11 in production, and 12% have adopted the latest version at the time, Java 15.

AdoptOpenJDK is the most popular free distribution, used by 44.1% of developers, whereas Oracle’s OpenJDK builds account for 28% and commercial Oracle JDK for 23% of the market.

IDE usage is heavily skewed toward JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA, with over 70% of JVM developers preferring it; Visual Studio Code and Apache NetBeans have also seen significant growth, and more than half of the community reports using multiple IDEs.

In the build tool space, Maven remains the dominant system with 76% adoption, while Gradle holds the second place at 38.1%.

Spring continues to dominate the framework landscape: over half of the market uses Spring Boot, and roughly one‑third relies on Spring MVC, confirming Spring’s central role in Java development.

Language popularity data shows that more than 90% of developers still use Java, with Kotlin trailing at 17.7%.

The full report is available at https://snyk.io/jvm-ecosystem-report-2021/ , and the article also advertises a 3,625‑page PDF of major tech company interview questions.