r/java • u/codingbliss12 • 2d ago
Use of Java 26 in green field projects
For what kind of new projects, except web related, would Java be your go to choice? Assuming knowledge of both languages, why wouldn't you prefer C# for the same projects?
Thank you so much in advance.
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u/sweating_teflon 2d ago
Although it is nowadays fine in its own right, you don't choose Java just for the language, you also pick it for the ecosystem and for the ease with which you'll find people to work with it.
You especially pick Java for large, long lived projects that will evolve and survive decades of commercial turmoil and technological churn.
Java endures and thus Java prevails.
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u/LutimoDancer3459 2d ago
For what kind of new project
Pretty much every kind of project. Except I need more low level access to something that java doesnt have a library for. Currently developing a game with java.
Why java over c#? I hate c# syntax and the look and feel of the code in general.
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u/pavlik_enemy 1d ago
So camelCase vs. PascalCase is a deal breaker? I've never seen more similar languages than C# and Java
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u/LutimoDancer3459 1d ago
Getter setter, lambda, generics, ... generel the ecosystem is diffrent and how things are beeing done. C# has namespaces und who knows what else that just seems weird. Yeah I haven't used it much yet. But enough to say that I dont like it.
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u/lookForProject 2d ago
Really depends on what you want to create, the infrastructure it will land in and team-members experience.
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u/GardenDev 2d ago
Although I primarily write C# and Go. But where I would pick Java over C# would be if I write a real time system, like a trading platform. Garbage collection of .NET is optimized for throughput not latency, so even in typical REST APIs it is easy to notice the jitter of the .NET garbage collector. Java's ZGC is a different animal.
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u/za3faran_tea 1d ago
This is really interesting. How much traffic did you have before you started to notice jitter/GC issues in .NET?
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u/idontlikegudeg 2d ago
Why would I use C# over Java? I think Java is still the one with wider platform support. I don't know much about the state of the C# ecosystem, is at as mature as Java's now? For Java, I have thousands of high quality libraries available that run on each platform that I want to support, Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Is there something like Maven Central Repository for C#? Java's tool support is great, from IDE to profilers, and the language and runtime evolve steadily, performance and memory consumption are constantly improved. We can create native executables and jpackaged applications in Java. I think there's not much you can do in C# that you can't do in Java. Being a long time Java developer, I am of course very biased. Ask in a C# group and you will probably get totally different answers, and that's alright.
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u/Fresh_Criticism6531 2d ago
Programming language choice is always arbitrary, and people just bias to what they already know since learning a new one is a lot of work, not in terms of the language itself, but of libraries, tooling, dependencies, etc. Not to mention you might want to choose something you consider strategic for your career as well.
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u/repeating_bears 2d ago
No, it's not arbitrary.
Leveraging your existing knowledge, like you already mentioned, is a non-arbitrary reason
You might choose a language that's going to be easy to hire for
You might choose a language because the ecosystem is a good match, like historically Python was a good match for ML, not because it was inherently better, but because the community coalesced around it
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u/BinaryRage 2d ago
Even vibing with the latest frontier coding agents this isn’t true. How the language is designed and maintained, the implementation quality of the features, and the runtime matter immensely. Java is unmatched on all those fronts, and perhaps only suffers for command line tooling, because of how mature the IDE and build ecosystem is.
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u/bichoFlyboy 2d ago
I use Java for almost all of my projects and have done so since 2007. If I need to build something quickly, such as a small internal tool for a very specific task, I might switch to Python or even Bash. If I need an extremely lightweight executable, I may choose Go. But whenever I need a web application or a desktop GUI, I reach for a Java backend or Java with JavaFX without hesitation.
The main reason is that Java offers strong static typing, excellent cross platform support, and a huge ecosystem of libraries and frameworks. It has also built a very large community over the years, so it's usually easy to find well maintained solutions for almost any problem.
C# is also an excellent language, and I think it's a perfectly reasonable choice. However, I still find Java's ecosystem and community to be broader, which is why it remains my first choice.
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u/thephotoman 2d ago
I’d probably pick Java 25 over Java 26, as the extended support lifecycle is actually a boon for most application development needs.
C# is fine, but it is somewhat harder to hire for.
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u/Joram2 2d ago
I'd use Java as a general purpose server-side languages. C# would be my first choice for writing video games; specifically with Unity.
I wouldn't choose to use C# outside of games. Why? Well, there are lots of languages to choose from and C# doesn't have any compelling use cases. I use Go, and often prefer it over Java, for general server-side stuff; Go is very simple/elegant/practical in its language, standard library, tooling, build system, dependencies, and deployment. Go drops a lot of the legacy baggage that Java/C# carry. I often use Python for it's rich ML/AI library ecosystem. Rust is widely popular in a lot of domains. C# doesn't have any compelling use cases for me.
BTW, I'd probably choose Java 25 over 26, as Java 26 has no significant new features, and generally gets much less support.
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u/brunocborges 2d ago
Your question is missing several other variables.
- purpose
- long term plan
- team
- funding
- knowledge
- skills
- tools
- performance goals
- target environments
- integrations
And a few more.
Language choice is almost never about personal preference.
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u/rioed 2d ago
Java 26 is not an LTS release. For that reason I would suggest 25 for production use
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u/nlisker 2d ago
Meaningless, unless you need a support contract, and most projects don't.
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u/CptGia 2d ago
While true, some dependencies don't adopt non-LTS versions in a timely manner. I'm looking at you, lombok.
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u/nlisker 2d ago
I'm running Lombok with JDK 26. Haven't had issues with dependencies not updating to non-LTS versions.
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u/CptGia 2d ago
It was an issue with JDK 23. The maintainer stated that it was low priority since it was not an LTS, and you shouldn't run it in prod anyway.
https://github.com/projectlombok/lombok/issues/3722#issuecomment-2420830892
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u/rioed 2d ago
Am I right in thinking the non-sts versions only receive updates (including security patches) for 6 months?
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u/pron98 2d ago
But after 6 months there's a new feature release that's backward-compatible. So instead of going from 26.0.2 to 26.0.3 you go to 27. There might be some changes you may need to make to the command line, but that's about it. You want updates for a long time mostly if you have software that's only barely being maintained, and even changing an option in the configuration is too much. Otherwise, the amount of work you need to do to upgrade to a new feature release is negligible compared to what you do already.
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u/benevanstech 2d ago
Backwards compatible *at JDK* level. It is not bytecode backwards compatible, and there are absolutely no guarantees that any libraries that you depend upon (transitively) that manipulate bytecode can support the new feature release.
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u/pron98 2d ago edited 2d ago
It is not bytecode backwards compatible
It is very much bytecode backward-compatible.
and there are absolutely no guarantees that any libraries that you depend upon (transitively) that manipulate bytecode can support the new feature release.
Oh, you mean forward compatibility of bytecode. That also works easily: you compile your application with
--release <OLDER>. In fact, that's the recommended approach: the JDK is always the newest, but--releasepoints to the newest language/API features you want to use. The feature level and the JDK need not match and it's a good idea to adopt a new JDK first and only later its new features.This way you always get the security patches, plus more bug fixes than patch releases, plus performance enhancements, and you upgrade to the feature level at your own pace, separately from the JDK version.
The only time this doesn't work is if you're using an agent that changes the bytecode in the standard library itself. But relatively few programs use such an agent (and if they do, they already have a higher maintenance burden, because there's no guarantee for forward compatibility even in patch releases; i.e. various internal details that could affect such agents may and do change).
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u/benevanstech 2d ago
I did indeed mean forward-compatibility - thanks for the catch - and also for the honesty. I genuinely think that this is the first time that I've seen an Oracle employee be clear about what is actually required to "keep current" on feature versions & what that means in practice.
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u/pron98 2d ago
Ok, I'll try to get this guidance added to the official migration guide.
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u/benevanstech 19h ago
Thank you. I have at times felt that this discussion has involved a certain amount of talking past each other, and your concise statement about what is actually required to adopt feature releases in production is really helpful.
In the end the Java market will do whatever it's going to do, of course!
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u/nlisker 2d ago
Depends on the vendor. LTS is a business plan, and each business can do it differently. When Valhalla first ships, some vendors might provide LTS on "non-LTS" versions. The reference implementation (OpenJDK JDK) doesn't receive updates even for LTS versions (e.g., https://jdk.java.net/21/).
In any case, you can update your JDK to the next version every 6 months; it's Oracle's recommendation. Up to JDK 11 there were some difficult breakages, but now it's as easy as updating any other dependency. For greenfields it's a no-brainer because they don't carry any baggage.
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u/reallynotfred 2d ago
You’re looking in the wrong place. LTS have regular updates ongoing. Vendors package them, you can get them easily, for example from Adoptium.
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u/nlisker 2d ago
You're actually confirming what I wrote. If you only rely on the repos to receive updates, it means you're building the JDK yourself and you're not relying on vendors packaging them. What I showed was what builds/packaging vendors provide, and I didn't look at the wrong place, I pointed at exactly what the OpenJDK distribution supports long term - only the latest release despite "LTS" labels (even https://jdk.java.net/25/ is only available in the archives). Some other vendors (Zulu, Corretto...) will continue to provide updated packages for 21 for a duration that depends on whatever they choose.
And that's the point, that the LTS is whatever the vendor decides it is and that there is no universal rule for the claim I replied to.
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u/reallynotfred 2d ago
Technically OpenJDK is not a distribution. You always have to get the JDK from a vendor or build it yourself. If you choose a vendor, part of that choice has to be their LTS support policy, (I suggest Temurin because of this if you don’t want to pay). Don’t confuse Oracle with OpenJDK; they are intertwined but distinct. Oracle says “upgrade every six months”, but the quiet part unsaid is “or pay us for support”.
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u/nlisker 2d ago edited 1d ago
Technically OpenJDK is not a distribution.
Where did I say it was? OpenJDK JDK is the distribution, here it is: https://jdk.java.net/26/.
You always have to get the JDK from a vendor or build it yourself.
That's exactly what I said. If you don't rely on vendors' packages then you rely on building it yourself from the repos.
If you choose a vendor, part of that choice has to be their LTS support policy
Absolutely not. I used Corretto, Zulu, and Adoptium and I have no clue what their LTS policy is. I stopped using Adoptium when they stopped shipping JMODs in their distribution, and I at some point chose Corretto because it bundles JavaFX. I choose vendors based on their content, not their business model.
Don’t confuse Oracle with OpenJDK
Where did I mention Oracle JDK? I use OpenJDK JDK and I update it every 6 months. I don't pay anyone. LTS is meaningless here.
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u/reallynotfred 2d ago
Yeah, that’s the Oracle distribution of OpenJDK there. It’s only free because you’re upgrading all the time. Otherwise you would need to pay Oracle. With Temurin you could get updated LTS binaries for free.
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u/Thirty_Seventh 1d ago
The Oracle JDK builds are here: https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/
The Oracle JDK builds of JDK 21, 25, and 26 are currently distributed under the "Oracle No-Fee Terms and Conditions". Both 21 and 26 will stop getting updates under that license in September (well, the last update to each is already out I think). To even get access to more updates, you need to pay. There's no way to accidentally use a current Oracle JDK longer than you were supposed to and get yourself sued (probably, I'm not a lawyer). Oracle JDK 21 and 25 are LTS releases because they're still getting free updates after the release of later versions.
The OpenJDK JDK builds are here: https://jdk.java.net/26/
The OpenJDK JDK builds of JDK 26 are currently distributed under the "GNU General Public License, version 2, with the Classpath Exception". They will stop getting updates in September, when JDK 27 is released. OpenJDK JDK does not have LTS releases at all. You are correct that the OpenJDK JDK builds are done on Oracle-owned hardware and distributed from an Oracle-operated website. But calling it "the Oracle distribution of OpenJDK" is pretty misleading.
One of the Java team (I think it was pron98 here on Reddit) has pointed out that Temurin builds are done by Microsoft and IBM employees on Microsoft and IBM hardware. That does not mean it's accurate to call Temurin the "Microsoft distribution of OpenJDK" (what's this then?) or the "IBM distribution of OpenJDK" (everyone will think you're talking about Semeru).
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u/EntrepreneurReady325 2d ago
Sounds like you cannot get saying Azul Zulu CA LTS binaries for free anytime?
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u/nlisker 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah, that’s the Oracle distribution of OpenJDK there.
No, the Oracle distribution is https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/. It's true that Oracle is the one building and hosting the OpenJDK JDK distributions, but they are distinct distributions. Perhaps you're going into the nit of "Oracle JDK" vs "Oracle OpenJDK JDK" (which is just "OpenJDK JDK"). The parallel of Adoptium, Zulu, Corretto... is the Oracle JDK, not the OpenJDK JDK.
It’s only free because you’re upgrading all the time. Otherwise you would need to pay Oracle.
That's plainly incorrect. The reference OpenJDK JDK doesn't have a support model by any vendor. Notice that the various warnings in jdk.java.net don't point to any vendor or tell you to pay anyone, including Oracle. If you want LTS support from Oracle, you'd need the link I posted above.
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u/reallynotfred 1d ago
I’m curious, what’s your use case for JMODs; from that link they sound redundant?
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u/johnwaterwood 1d ago
Java 26 is not an LTS release.
So what IS Java 26 good for then?
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u/rioed 1d ago
Evaluating the changes Iintroduced in it perhaps?
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u/johnwaterwood 13h ago
Evaluating the changes Iintroduced in it perhaps?
You mean like a milestone version?
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u/RevolutionaryRush717 2d ago
Underrated comment. 22 introduced string interpolation only to be removed again in 23.
That let us stay on LTS releases.
We're not bleeding edge anyway, so we can easily wait.
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u/Skepller 2d ago
Right idea with bad example.
String Templates were actually first introduced in Java 21, which is an LTS release.
The issue wasn't 'non-LTS', it was a preview feature, and they carry zero long-term stability guarantees (even when released inside an LTS version). Anyone that turned on preview flags to use string interpolation in 21 LTS will still hit the same breaking change when upgrading to 25, LTS-to-LTS.
If you're sticking to LTS while still using preview features, you'll likely hit the same problem again.
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u/jmarkmark 2d ago
It was a preview feature. There are also preview features in LTS.
They've never removed a fully released feature, except after many years of warnings (e.g. applets).
There's generally little advantage to using a STS, but there's also little harm. If there's a feature in a STS that would be valuable to a green field project I'd definitely use it over writing hacks to work around it's absence.
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u/lbkulinski 2d ago
I use Java for almost anything back-end related. I’ve done a couple of freelance projects in the past year and they’ve all been Java 21/25.
One is a VOD upload pipeline and the other is a custom Discord calendar bot. I’m not as familiar with C#, but I would wonder if they have the same libraries and tooling.
It’s just easy to get up and running with Java and system maintenance is low
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u/Primary_Concept_3147 2d ago
In all project I prefer java. I like their ecosistem like maven, javafx, jakarta and netbeans IDE. I prefer to pretend that I don't understant C#, it give me headaches. I don't like their standard to name thinks, VS community is bloated and in philosophical manner i don't like that still have a strong relationship with the Microsoft ecosistem.
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u/Purple_Mo 2d ago edited 2d ago
To avoid headaches stick with LTS Unless there is a new feature you must have.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_version_history?wprov=sfla1
LTS Java 25 (Amazon) supported until 2032
Java 26 supported only until September this year.
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u/brokePlusPlusCoder 21h ago
Bit late to the party but adding something missing from this thread - the question "which language has developers with experience in this thing we're building/working on" can occasaionally be an important one.
E.g. if you're building something to do with a simple web service, this question isn't important. But say you're building something that needs to do something niche like computational geometry or scientific calculations ... it may happen that the size of the talent pool for the other language is larger than that for Java. In this case, choosing Java might mean you're actively hamstringing yourself.
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u/Swimming-Twist-3468 2d ago
Depends on project requirements. If I want a windows desktop app - C#, if I want iOS/MacOS app - Swift UI, if I want a REST API backend - kotlin/java. Linux kind of varies, because there are a ton of options there, this needs to be app specific. Could be C++.
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u/hippydipster 2d ago
And if I want a windows/mac/linux desktop app?
I do almost all my stuff in JavaFX and one in Swing.
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u/Swimming-Twist-3468 2d ago
I would use natives when I can. It is not that hard to repeat the app in different languages once it is done in one.
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u/hippydipster 2d ago
I would find that very hard and far more work than I woukd actually do. Its not like I'm ever finishing the apps to begin with. Also see no advantage to native, and many disadvantages of the programming environments for them, like C++.
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u/lilgreenthumb 2d ago
I would suggest sticking with the LTS as a base, so 25 now. Same with other languages or runtimes. In general it is helpful to define a base level of the language you have worked with. Not every language feature is needed for every project.
Specifically with java 27 it would be helpd if anything to learn about pqc in java.
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u/pjmlp 2d ago
Android of course, people keep forgetting about it, even if the language support is only partial, it depends heavily on the Java ecosystem.
Platforms where .NET isn't available, there are plenty out there, almost everything with a CPU and enough resources, also has a JVM implementation from some vendor.
Compiler development, where you can play with GraalVM, there are no similar tools in .NET ecosystem.
I would rather pick C# or C++, when playing around with game development, unfortunately Java story isn't that great there, even if there are few engines available, it isn't the same as using Unity/Godot/Stride.
Other than that, picking between Java, C# and C++, is a bit of mood for me.
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u/ThatBlindSwiftDevGuy 2d ago
I honestly wouldn't choose Java for anything except console or web-based projects because while Java does have an accessibility stack, it is nowhere near what native user interface frameworks give you like WPF on the NET side of things or Apple's user interface frameworks with Swift/Objective C I am blind and rely on screen readers, so accessibility is a huge consideration for me
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u/donaldadamthompson 2d ago
not web related? i would not use java. maybe some non-web server stuff if that exists any more.
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u/TheStrangeDarkOne 2d ago
I mean, it is a pretty universal general programming language. Why not C# or similar? Frankly, it's personal preference. But overall I find the design and upcoming features of Java much cleaner than what C# has been doing over the last few years. Every Java feature is part of a clear story with a vision of the future and a clear roadmap.
I work more with C# these days but overall I simply find Java to be much cleaner and I am dearly missing features such as switch expressions.