Ask HN: Why do big companies tend to only build with Java?

Good threading support (no global interpreter lock or anything like that).

Very fast.

Unicode strings.

Some measure of type checking (probably appeals more to large, enterprisey projects). This also makes IDE autocomplete easier.

Lots of libraries.

Cross platform.

And yes, a large pool of developers.

Not too many languages can check off all those boxes, making Java a sweet spot for a lot of enterprise development. Probably not a good fit if you just want to throw together a CMS, though.

it's not just big companies that use java. We're a small company (15 ppl) and have built our backend in java and the frontend in PHP.

I'm not a developer but I think at least part of the reason for building in java is the abundance of libraries (i.e. Apache Commons). We also just do POJOs/Servlets so development can be rapid. I think most people think of J2EE when they think of big companies and java.

Most of these answers don't seem to be written by anyone actually involved in "enterprise" development.

Here are our simple reasons:

* The JVM is fast.

* The JVM can take proper advantage of multiple cores directly (no GIL).

* The JVM is efficient compared to other runtimes.

* Java is type-safe.

* There's a library for everything, and libraries are generally well-documented, unit-tested, and provide stable releases with binary/source-stable APIs.

* There are a number of alternative languages to choose from that can interoperate on the JVM (Scala, Clojure, JRuby, ...)

I've worked with plenty of JVM/Java-based projects that shipped quickly. There genuinely isn't anything else I would use server-side.

There are good answers throughout this thread but the thing I find a lot of people forget is support.

Startup founders and small businesses tend to have more talent available to them. When you have 4 guys with MIT degrees you can hack through problems so you don’t need support. But if you’re a big company you sometimes have to settle for the day laborer. The guy who can do the grunt work coding but who slams on the brakes when he runs into any kind of problem.

As someone running a shop with those type of workers you have a choice. Have them wait for one of the more senior people to help them or throw $300 at the problem and have them call support.

This doesn’t produce the most elegant code but most big companies aren’t interested in that anyway. If it works and crashes relatively rarely most corporations are fine with it.

Unrelated to that it should also be mentioned that companies like IBM and Microsoft market to non-IT execs where as open solutions don’t have marketing departments. There’s a reason they say “No one ever got fired buying Microsoft”

Its a well structured, well thought out language that somewhat feels like an extension of a lower level language, like C. Generally, companies working on big projects want developers who are comfortable with a wide variety of programming concepts, including using interfaces, modular code, etc and Java, and its ecosystem, helps to reinforce these types of practices. Static typing is also critical for a larger application, something like PHP is really just a scripting language for front-end display and if thats all you have used you are probably missing out on a lot of larger CS concepts