Mark Watson - like Ed Burnette, who he points to - advocate a slower moving Java language. Here's their point:

Java is great because of the huge amount of 3rd party software available for it. The majority of open source software in the world today is written in Java. It's nearly ubiquitous. But Java has to stabalize or we'll lose that advantage. It's 10 years old and it should be mature. Not dead, just mature.

What they point to is a problem that any commonly used language (like C and C++ before it) runs into - if your user base uses a diverse set of tools, then the amount of movement possible in the language itself becomes minimal. The pushback against new Java features is increasing for exactly that reason - and Burnette points out that C# doesn't face that problem, because MS can update it pretty much at will.

We do the same thing here at Cincom - any VM is downwardly compatible within a given generation (2.5.x, 3.x, 5i.x, 7.x) - but not down to a former generation. That allows us to make changes and not stay static - but it's a luxury we can afford because of the fact that we aren't in a commodity position, like Java is. It's an interesting conundrum - once a language reaches mass popularity, improvements to it become harder and harder - and you'll have to look outside that language for real jumps.