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by Norman Richards.
Original Post: I didn't get the memo about the death of Java either
Feed Title: Orb [norman richards]
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It's not just you Scott. I didn't get the memo either. I can just imagine Duke walking into the room now: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated".
I don't buy into the argument that Java is dead or even dying. Many people now point to Ruby as a key indicator of the ultimate demise of Java, but I'd say the Ruby movement is making Java even stronger than ever. But, I understand why people would feel that way, especially people who are only recently discovering that the world is bigger than Java.
I started my ruby journey a couple years back. At the prompting of a talk by (suprise surprise) Dave Thomas, I started exploring both Objective-C and ruby. Since Ruby conf was in Austin that year, I paid a bit more attention to ruby and became quite a fan. I even switched to writing my prototype code in ruby at the company I was working in at the time. It was fun times for all. I learned a lot and began to have a better appreciation for both the strengths and weaknesses of Java. Although I started off my career with C, C++ and Tcl, I'd been doing Java for so long that I really had lost some of my perspective on other ways of doing things.
Since then ruby has grown and new frameworks like rails prove that ruby isn't just for prototypes and small hacks. Does that make enough to seriously threaten Java? At this point, that's a solid no. Dethroning Java is something that will take years and years to do. And despite my love for ruby, I don't think ruby will be the technology that does it.
What ruby is going to do is provide competition in the idea space. That's something that Java has never had. The only mild threat so far has been C#. C# has ultimately been a failure, but it has been a huge success for Java. Many of the real Java innovations of the last couple years have come directly from Java having competition for developer's mind.
While C# was a minor disruptive force, ruby is a major one. Ruby isn't just a Java clone with a few neat ideas bolted on like C# was. Ruby is real shift - it's a completely different language that challenges Java on the core concepts. This can only be good for Java developers.
The fresh ideas in the ruby community will spill over onto the Java world, and I'm excited to see what that will yield. On the Java side of things, I'm extremely pleased with where enterprise Java is going. EJB3 is incredible, and I see annotations + AOP really simplifying life for developers. The effects of these technologies on the Java community is only now beginning. With some added innovation from the competing technologies, I see many years of happy Java coding ahead.
So, Java isn't dead. It isn't even close to dying. It's just that for once we have competing technologies that are actually innovative enough to steal developer mindshare from Java. It's possible that ruby would get enough momentum behind it to dethrone Java 4 or 5 years down the road. Something has to. I'm not sure I want to be coding Java as we know it now 10 years from now anyways. But, I suspect what will replace Java as we know it now is a more advanced version of Java.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Sun and the Java community will drop the ball. Maybe the Java development will get stuck in the past and be unwilling to make fundamental language changes that will be required by the future. But, I'm optimistic enough about Java to see the advancing army of competing ideas as an opportunity to make Java better.
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