OpenJDK is the development kit for Java, the language with 26 years of history behind it. It is not a new language by any standards, especially in the industry where new solutions appear every few years and are usually better than their predecessors. And OpenJDK, the most popular instance of Java, is 14 years old already. By all means, OpenJDK should have been replaced many times already. And yet it is still one of the most popular development tools in the world! How could this happen?
In this article, we will try to answer this question, dive deep into the process of constant upgrading of OpenJDK, talk about the open-source approach to development, and describe all the things that make Java so unique.