Why Spring Dominates Java Development: Insights from the 2020 State of Spring Report

Every programmer has their own development habits, prefers certain tools and frameworks, but since its release in 2003, the Spring framework has become the top choice for most Java developers.

Last September, VMWare released the 2020 State of Spring report, which confirms this.

The report surveyed 450 randomly selected developers worldwide—60% from the US, the rest from the UK. The gender ratio was 8:2, which raises questions about the representation of female developers.

Respondents were mostly elite developers aged 35‑44, all using Java with Spring or other frameworks. The original expectation was about 60% using Spring/Spring Boot and 40% not, but in reality the vast majority used Spring/Spring Boot. Only 25 out of 450 said they do not use Spring/Spring‑Boot, and another 38 use no framework at all.

The survey found that Spring/Spring Boot developers tend to spend more time on unit testing—25% of their effort versus 20% for non‑Spring developers.

Spring/Spring Boot developers also tend to produce higher code quality and more maintainable code, achieving better coverage. 54% of Spring developers rate their code quality as excellent, compared with 44% of non‑Spring framework users and 39% of those with no framework. 100% test coverage was achieved only by Spring users. Agreement that unit testing makes coding easier was 93% for Spring users, 88% for other framework users, and 79% for non‑framework users.

The report highlights five distinctive advantages of Spring/Spring Boot:

Core technologies (such as Spring context, dependency injection)

Testing support

Data access

Integration with other technologies (e.g., Hibernate)

Easier setup of web interfaces/APIs

Among these, the most favored advantages are easier setup of web interfaces/APIs (23.8%) and testing support (21.2%).

58% of Spring/Spring Boot users say the framework saves them time, 54% say their testing is faster, 51% experienced smoother modernization, and 49% say it reduces developer friction.

Beyond unit testing, the proportion of time spent on other (non‑unit) testing is 22.5% for Spring, 21.8% for other frameworks, and 19.3% for no framework.

Compared with the same period last year, the share of Spring/Spring Boot users rose from 60% to 86%, a significant increase.

The ease of testing also makes Spring attractive to independent developers. For example, the tool Diffblue Cover automatically generates unit tests for Java code and is especially effective for Spring users because of Spring’s standardized testing approach, built‑in mocking, and isolation of database dependencies.

As testing becomes increasingly recognized as essential, the growth of Spring/Spring Boot users is only a matter of time.

If you’re interested in other contents of the report, you can view it directly; feel free to leave comments with your thoughts!

Report URL: https://tanzu.vmware.com/content/ebooks/state-of-spring-2020