Yes, at EclipseCon 2022 an Oracle manager working on the Helidon framework presented their results replacing the Helidon core, which was based on Netty (and reactive programming) with Virtual Threads (using imperative programming). [1].
Unfortunately the slides from that presentation were not uploaded to the conference site, but this article summarizes [2] the most significant metrics. The Oracle guy claimed that by using Virtual Threads Oracle was able to implement, using imperative Java, a new engine for Helidon (called Nima) that had identical performance to the old engine based on Netty, which is (at least in Oracle's opinion) the top performing reactive HTTP engine.
The conclusion of the presentation was that based on Oracle's experience imperative code is much easier to write, read and maintain with respect to reactive code. Given the identical performance achieved with Virtual Threads, Oracle was going to abandon reactive programming in favor of imperative programming and virtual threads in all its products.
Unfortunately the slides from that presentation were not uploaded to the conference site, but this article summarizes [2] the most significant metrics. The Oracle guy claimed that by using Virtual Threads Oracle was able to implement, using imperative Java, a new engine for Helidon (called Nima) that had identical performance to the old engine based on Netty, which is (at least in Oracle's opinion) the top performing reactive HTTP engine.
The conclusion of the presentation was that based on Oracle's experience imperative code is much easier to write, read and maintain with respect to reactive code. Given the identical performance achieved with Virtual Threads, Oracle was going to abandon reactive programming in favor of imperative programming and virtual threads in all its products.
[1] https://www.eclipsecon.org/2022/sessions/helidon-nima-loom-b...
[2] https://medium.com/helidon/helidon-n%C3%ADma-helidon-on-virt...