[the_trapper]

Although it's not a guarantee that it'll stick around, the fact that it's open source greatly increases the probability.

GWT is actually still very much alive even though Google abandoned it years ago.

[scarface74]

Is that something you are willing to bet a major architectural decision on and/or your career?

I’ve been a Microsoft developer for over 20 years and a .Net developer for over 10. Even though I don’t see .Net “dying”, it’s also not a major growth opportunity.

Java is definitely not doing well compared to .Net even though it is open source - because of the mismanagement of Oracle. I see dart going down the same road.

As much as I prefer .Net to the JavaScript ecosystem, I am tying my horse to it. I’m focusing my attention on everything JavaScript over the next year (yes it makes me sad).

Until four months ago, I had never touched Python. But the more I got into AWS, the more I realized that the ecosystem around AWS and Python seemed to be the strongest. So Python it was.

[pjmlp]

Despite the HN hate, Oracle is still doing a better service than Sun was on their dying years.

And lets not forget no one else bothered, beyond a timid attempt from IBM, which I think would have been probably worse as Java steward.

Google just hoped that Sun would have died in silence as way to settle their wrongdoings.

[nailer]

> Java is definitely not doing well compared to .Net even though it is open source

Depends on whather you consider Dalvik (or whatever the current Android Java tech is) to be Java - in which case, it is.

[scarface74]

Market wise, Java is still popular in the Enterprise and of course if you are developing for Android, you’re going to probably use Java (I’d rather use Kotlin), but for backend work the three most marketable languages seem to be JavaScript (Node), .Net, and Java.

Yeah PHP jobs are a dime a dozen but they don’t pay well. Python is a little better but it’s not “Enterprisey” enough for major corporations and the cool hipster companies where all the money is going are using Node.

[cutler]

I don't know where you're getting your information about Python from. It's popularity has skyrocketed in recent years. Search Indeed's API for title:python and location:London. 412 Python jobs compared with 278 for Node.js. What's also interesting is that there are currently 35% more Django jobs than Rails in London whilst at Angel.co they're about even.

[scarface74]

Well, if I ever want to move to London...

As I said, there are also plenty of PHP and WordPress jobs, but those aren't exactly paying top dollar either.

If you have to tie your horse to something. It makes the most sense to tie it to JS. Until something takes over JS on the browser, it's going to stay marketable. Then you consider Node for the server and the frameworks that you can make good enough mobile apps with JS has both marketability and flexibility going for it.

Then add TypeScript on top of it, you have a mostly strongly typed language.

[nailer]

As (primarily) a node user, there's way more data science an ML in Python than there is node.

If you're still tying your horse (and haven't already) it might be better to skate to where the puck is moving - Elixir would be a good example.