# Why ElasticSearch was written in Java?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-elasticsearch-was-written-in-java/182035
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [May 21, 2019, 2:56pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-elasticsearch-was-written-in-java/182035 "2019-05-21T14:56:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@chughpiyush](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/chughpiyush)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2019, 2:56pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-elasticsearch-was-written-in-java/182035/1 "2019-05-21T14:56:18Z")
I am exploring other languages than Java. What I have learnt till date is that there is no silver bullet to solve each kind of use case and one needs to choose a language on the basis of what problem they are trying to solve .
What triggered this question were these two blog posts:
- [Why Docker was written in Go?](https://www.slideshare.net/jpetazzo/docker-and-go-why-did-we-decide-to-write-docker-in-go)
- [Why Kubernates was written in Go?](https://blog.gopheracademy.com/birthday-bash-2014/kubernetes-go-crazy-delicious/)
The first version of Elasticsearch was released in 2010, and there has to be a reason why Java was chosen for it.
> **Follow up question:** What other language would be better performing for Elasticsearch if it was to be rewritten today? Would GoLang be a better choice than Java?
---
### Author:  [@Mark\_Harwood](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Mark_Harwood)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2019, 3:04pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-elasticsearch-was-written-in-java/182035/2 "2019-05-21T15:04:34Z")
Hi Piyush,
Putting aside the pros and cons of Java as a language, a simplistic answer would be "because the core library on which elasticsearch depends (Lucene) is written in Java"
---
### Author:  [@chughpiyush](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/chughpiyush)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2019, 3:40pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-elasticsearch-was-written-in-java/182035/3 "2019-05-21T15:40:53Z")
Thanks for your reply Mark. One additional question, though I am not sure you will have an answer for me but I'll ask anyway, why the core library (Lucene) was written in Java? Wasn't C or C++ a better choice for such a core piece of software as C/C++ are closer to machine language as compared to Java?
---
### Author:  [@Mark\_Harwood](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Mark_Harwood)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2019, 4:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-elasticsearch-was-written-in-java/182035/4 "2019-05-21T16:00:47Z")
Doug Cutting was the original creator of Lucene (and later, Hadoop).
He [said this](https://www.zipcodewilmington.com/blog/3-modern-apps-and-companies-that-use-java) of the decision to use Java for Hadoop:
> "Java offers a good compromise between developer productivity and runtime performance. Developers benefit from a simple, powerful, type-safe language with a wide range of high quality libraries. Performance is generally good enough"
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2019, 4:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-elasticsearch-was-written-in-java/182035/5 "2019-06-18T16:01:04Z")
This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.