30 Years of Java – Interview with Community Representatives (Part 1)

Contents

Over the past 30 years, a vibrant community has formed around Java. Over the course of the year, I interviewed several German-speaking representatives about their experiences. The response was overwhelming. Many thanks to everyone who participated. In this first part, Alexander Culum (Organizer JUG Frankfurt), Birgit Kratz (Co-organizer of Softwerkskammern Cologne and Düsseldorf, and SoCraTes), Simon Martinelli (Java Champion, Co-organizer JUG Switzerland), Dierk König (Java Champion and Professor at Northwest Switzerland University of Applied Sciences), and Christian Stein (Open Source Committer and member of the Java Platform Group) share their insights.

Falk Sippach

Falk Sippach is a software architect, consultant, and trainer at embarc Software Consulting GmbH. He is actively involved in the Java community and shares his knowledge in articles, blog posts, and lectures.

Java has shaped many developers from their first steps in IT – and has experienced highs, lows, and several reinventions during this time. The following answers reflect personal beginnings, formative experiences, critical moments, and an assessment of Java's role in today's software development. Finally, they venture a look ahead: with tips for personal development and expectations for Java in the coming years.

When and with which version did you first come into contact with Java?

Alexander Culum: That was actually during my studies at the University of Münster; the professor (Achim Clausing) had just switched his entire introductory lecture from Ada to the brand-new object-oriented language Java back then (which was indeed already in 1997!). In retrospect, a very bold and forward-thinking decision at that time. Another exciting moment with Professor Clausing was around 1999, when I sat with him and he showed me Google, a new search engine from the research field. He said it would replace the search engines of the time (Altavista, Yahoo) thanks to advanced algorithms. I told my fellow students, and we had a good laugh. Well.

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From March 10th to 12th, 2026, the JavaLand conference will take place. Next year, the community conference will move to Germany's largest theme park, Europa-Park Rust. The program offers nearly 130 talks in 13 thematic areas.

Birgit Kratz: I checked my CV for that. In early 2005, a project where I developed with Java was first mentioned there. At that time, Java 5 had just been released. But the project was still using Java 1.3. Before that, I had worked quite a lot with C/C++. The switch to Java wasn't exactly "easy peasy" for me, but it wasn't an insurmountable hurdle either. After more than 20 years, I still find Java exciting and learn new aspects of the language almost daily.

Simon Martinelli: I first came into contact with Java in 2000 during a postgraduate program – J2SE 1.3 was brand new at the time.

Dierk König: In 1995 with Java 1.0. Applets and JDBC were cool at the beginning.

Christian Stein: Java has captivated me since 1997. According to the complete JDK matrix, it must have been one of the 1.1 versions. Until then, I had already gained some experience with Basic, Pascal, Delphi, and C, primarily in game development. And even despite the slowness at the time in direct comparison to other languages, I already knew that a virtual machine would be better and more stable in the future.

Looking back, what was your most beautiful experience with the language or the Java ecosystem?

Alexander Culum: There are many. It was great to see Java gaining more and more traction, even against strong competitors like C#. I loved the release of Java 8 and also the fact that I was able to found the Java User Group Frankfurt in 2009 and there were always (sometimes just enough) interested people, so that the JUGF has survived to this day and we are a small but very fine community. In general, Spring, after I finally understood it (and we're talking years here), was always my loyal, sometimes too magical tool, which I learned to appreciate greatly. The Java ecosystem would certainly be different today without Spring and the great developers behind it.

Birgit Kratz: What I find most beautiful are always the moments when new language features finally click for me. It's probably because, from my perspective, I sometimes learn very slowly, almost slow-witted. I experienced this when switching from procedural to OO programming. Then came Java 5 with annotations. It felt like it took me ages to grasp what they were for and what you could do with them. Today, annotations, especially when using frameworks like Spring Boot, are indispensable. My next big struggle was the introduction of lambdas and thus the step towards more functional programming. It also took me a very long time to grasp that and then use it purposefully. But when it finally clicks, it's a very beautiful feeling.

Simon Martinelli: There are countless beautiful experiences in my career. One of the most exciting projects with Java was the first online ticket shop for SBB in 2002/2003 – my first time as a developer in a really large team. More recently, I often think about the many inspiring encounters as a speaker at Java conferences and JUG meetups. However, the absolute highlight was undoubtedly my appointment as a Java Champion in 2024.

Dierk König: Without a doubt, the Java community with events like JavaOne, when it still filled the Moscone Center alone, and we could reach tens of thousands of developers, for example, when Groovy was introduced.

Christian Stein: Just one experience? Okay, just a few from so many beautiful ones: bringing a game written in Java (iRoll) to market, becoming part of the JUnit team, the Java User Group Bonn, and the Java Platform Group.

But not all that glitters is gold. What negatively influenced you, or what was an unpleasant moment in the Java environment?

Alexander Culum: There's a lot of that too: In the beginning, I didn't get along with the language at all (as I said, I started with Java 1.0). Terribly slow, horribly overengineered (yes, exactly: Applets and EJB 1.0!). After Borland's Delphi, it was a real horror. Then came the acquisition of Sun by Oracle, which was perceived by the community as the final nail in the coffin, at a time when competitors were developing much more dynamically and faster. It's interesting that it might have been the exact opposite. The absolute focus on backward compatibility was also not always well received and was often criticized. Without this focus, however, Java would probably only be one of many languages in the enterprise environment today.

Birgit Kratz: It's probably also because some things take a very long time to grasp and then can be quickly forgotten again. An eternal struggle for me is always reading file contents and processing the data within them. Files, InputStreams, OutputStreams, Readers, Writers, … – a big jumble in my head. It's similar when working with dates and times: Date, Time, Instance, Zone, Clock, Temporal, Formatter, ... – all you can do is read the documentation anew each time. Unfortunately, these topics only click with me for a short time. And unfortunately, this knowledge never manages to settle into my long-term memory.

Simon Martinelli: Early in my "Java career," I had my first encounters with J2EE application servers – a quite exciting experience. However, when I think back to the long waiting times for the server to start, I certainly don't miss those times.

Dierk König: The demise of Sun Microsystems was painful.

Christian Stein: I still miss Delphi's UI editor! There were and are imitators in the Java environment, but they don't come close to the original, or rather, to my memory of it. Related to this, it bothers me that the Java Development Kit has not included its own build tool for 30 years. Although individual tools like javac, jar, jlink, and jpackage provide a standardized workflow, a fundamental project structure and a tool that translates this structure into calls to other tools are missing. What isn't, can still be.

Do you think Java is still relevant after 30 years? What role do you think Java plays in modern software development, especially compared to other languages and technologies?

Alexander Culum: Yes, I think Java will still be relevant in 30 years. Despite an incredible number of great innovations, it will probably never be the language of "early adopters" and startups. But many rewrites of cool, slick JS server-side applications will be in Java. And with the current development, you can see that Java can easily adapt innovations from other languages if it wants to, even as a "heavyweight," statically typed programming language.

Birgit Kratz: Java is definitely still relevant after 30 years. Very much so. I think Java is just entering its prime. Since the switch to semi-annual release cycles, there have been continuous useful developments that keep the language modern on the one hand, but also guarantee a lot of continuity on the other. Certainly, the code developed in Java today doesn't look the same as it did 30 years ago. And that's a good thing. Let's be honest, who looks the same today as they did 30 years ago, and – would you want to? Nowadays, you can write much more concise code in Java, but it is still (or rather, precisely because of this) very readable. Of course, there are other, newer programming languages with which tasks can perhaps be solved more easily, shorter, or "snappier." However, such languages are often very specialized for solving such tasks. Java, on the other hand, offers a very broad foundation for solving (almost) all problems.

Simon Martinelli: Java remains extremely relevant. In my current software modernization projects, I repeatedly experience that existing systems can simply be analyzed and even partially reused – a great advantage of static typing and Java's unique backward compatibility.

Dierk König: Java stands for the reliability of a stable and widely used execution environment.

Christian Stein: Yes, absolutely relevant. Precisely because Java as a platform has been around for a long time and is open, because Java is "boring," and also because since Java 9 in 2017, it has not only reinvented itself through two releases per year: Innovations appear reliably and predictably! "Long-standing": OpenJDK, large open-source scene, many Java User Groups and conferences; "boring": 30 years is quite something in IT, pays the bills, other languages test innovations – Java follows; "innovations": Projects like Loom, Valhalla, Babylon, and not least Amber are closing gaps with other languages and sometimes even go beyond them.