JDK
Ranked 2 of 3 Java development kits by recommenders
Developers recommend the JDK for its low runtime overhead and compact footprint improving with each release since Java 17. Critics warn that Oracle's distribution carries licensing and enforcement risk.
Developers recommend the JDK for its low runtime overhead and compact footprint improving with each release since Java 17. Critics warn that Oracle's distribution carries licensing and enforcement risk.
21 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 13
- approval share
- 38%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Compact, low-overhead runtime improving each release
“it's much better since Java 17 and each release make it even more compact and direct”
Comment from 17 Oct 2026 in “JDK 28” “the overhead of the JVM itself is pretty low”
Comment from 18 Oct 2026 in “JDK 28”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Oracle licensing and enforcement risk
“I don't understand why anyone would actively choose to use a JVM from Oracle if they can avoid it.”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “Oracle slashes 30k jobs with a cold 6 a.m. email” “They still love to play the old Oracle tricks, so I'd rather not use any of their distributions.”
Comment from 18 Mar 2026 in “Java 26 is here, and with it a solid foundation for the future” “Their licensing can get expensive and they are famously pretty aggressive on enforcing terms.”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Installing Java in 2025, and Version Managers” - Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “Oracle slashes 30k jobs with a cold 6 a.m. email”
- Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Karpathy: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks”
Slow cold start and warmup
“We are moving away from it in our serverless functions due to the cold start times.”
Comment from 18 Oct 2026 in “JDK 28” “Almost all Java benchmarks are for the "steady state" after half an hour of warm up time.”
Comment from 17 Oct 2026 in “JDK 28” “the C++ replacement for a Java program bottlenecking my CI takes 1/3rd as long”
Comment from 18 Oct 2026 in “JDK 28”
Other Java development kits people recommend
The two most recommended other Java development kits, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenJDK | 23 | 7 | 77% | 10 | — | Approved |
| JDKThis page | 8 | 13 | 38% | 2 | — | — |
| Java Development Kit (JDK) | 6 | 3 | 67% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
20 of the 21 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the C++ replacement for a Java program bottlenecking my CI takes 1/3rd as long”
“It's a bit held back by not having decent access to SIMD intrinsics.”
“Being able to use PEM directly will ease a lot of pain.”
“We are moving away from it in our serverless functions due to the cold start times.”
“the overhead of the JVM itself is pretty low”
“Other posters here seem to misunderstand what AOT means in today's Java.”
“it's much better since Java 17 and each release make it even more compact and direct”
“Almost all Java benchmarks are for the "steady state" after half an hour of warm up time.”
“I think that specific issue was a huge mistake, because it means the interruption, which was already messy, is now unusable.”
“someone accidentally downloaded the JDK”
“This isn't what I think "deprecation" means.”
“everything these days is of/from/newInstance/something else”
“encumbered with a mine field of legalese”
“incremental compile times are insanely fast, even on very large projects”
“I don't understand why anyone would actively choose to use a JVM from Oracle if they can avoid it.”
“to prevent anyone downloading the Oracle JDK and incurring the wrath of Oracle licensing”
“They still love to play the old Oracle tricks, so I'd rather not use any of their distributions.”
“Current JRE/JDK's run it in a bad way (threads get borked) since Java 1.6/OpenJDK 7 I think”
“they install OracleJDK while you have tested everything under OpenJDK”
“Their licensing can get expensive and they are famously pretty aggressive on enforcing terms.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.