Oracle announced today the availability of Java 16, which adds 17 enhancements to a software development kit that is now being updated every six months.

Georges Saab, vice president of development for the Java Platform Group at Oracle, said while most Java development teams are still using Java 8 or earlier editions of the platform, the expectation is that many of them will soon move forward, as updates are made available in smaller increments that are easier to test and vet.

At the same time, Oracle is committing to make available long term release editions of Java that won’t be updated as frequently. While there are many organizations anxious to take advantage of new capabilities as quickly as possible, Saab noted there are just as many that value stability more than innovation.

The latest edition adds support for finalized pattern matching for instances and records, as well as other language enhancements that were previewed in Java 14. Developers can also employ a packaging tool to ship self-contained Java applications that will make it easier to deploy in modern IT environments, said Saab.

Additional capabilities now available include the Vector application programming interface (API), the Foreign Linker API (JEP 389), and the Foreign-Memory Access API that are all available in incubations as well as a sealed classes capability that is being made available as a preview.

In general, Saab said, one of the primary reasons many organizations don’t tend to update Java more frequently is the frameworks they rely on to employ it at a higher level of abstraction are still optimized for older versions. However, as Java updates are delivered in a more modular fashion, it will become easier for the providers of those frameworks to keep pace.

It’s not precisely clear to what degree IT teams are employing Java to build next-generation applications based on microservices. However, a recent survey published by VMware, found 95% of respondents have either already used the open source Spring framework, based on Java, to either containerize an application (65%) or plan to do so (30%).

A quarter of a century after its initial development, Java is still the dominant programming language relied on to build enterprise applications. In many instances, the lack of tools for building Java applications for Kubernetes platforms was a significant inhibitor of adoption for the cloud-native platform. In the last six months, however, the number of tools for building and deploying Java applications on Kubernetes clusters has increased.

Despite the proliferation of alternative platforms for building and deploying applications on Kubernetes platforms, the appetite for retraining legions of Java developers is low. Most developers will rely on the programming tool they already know, especially when it comes to building mission-critical applications for the enterprise. That may mean some of those applications might not be as fast as they could be, but, given the level of risk, there’s always going to be a natural tendency toward being safe rather than sorry.