[Spyro7]

It's gotta be a slow day on hacker news when this is at the top page. (Or, is this being upvoted because it is Cringely.)

An entire article about web development past, present, and future without a single mention of PHP....

All snark aside, I strongly disagree with several things in this article.

Java never left, so it can hardly arrive again. Anyone that has ever worked in a corporate environment problably knows what I am talking about. Java dominates the Enterprise landscape.

Disk speed limitations on database access times can be and has already been overcome by in-memory caching. This is not new. Advancing SSD tech will not suddenly lead to Java's total ascendance as a web development platform.

The characterization of dynamic languages as "easy to program for a broader, younger, and maybe less experienced crowd of developers" is a rather unfortunate blanket generalization. This is especially the case because most people that I know that use dynamic languages usually have some experience in things like Java, C, C++ that Cringlely seems to hold in high regard.

And finally:

http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

The real problem that the vast majority of web developers face is not trying to cope with overwhleming amounts of daily traffic. The real problem is how do you build a product that is compelling enough to get signups, and how do you continue to develop this product to attract new signups.

Java is fast, and that is lovely. However, speed of execution does not matter when your development speed drags. When you are developing a product, you need to be able to move fast. If you get substantial traffic, then you can always rewrite backend services in Java (or whatever floats your boat) at that time.

Edit: When I say Java, I refer to the language - just as Cringely does in this article.

Of course a number of excellent languages have developed that combine the advantages of the JVM with the benefits of a more powerful language. (My personal favorite being Clojure.)

[nupark2]

However, speed of execution does not matter when your development speed drags. When you are developing a product, you need to be able to move fast.

However, the JVM doesn't necessarily mean 'Java'. If you get free performance and more efficient development, there's no advantage to using a poorly architected inefficient runtime.

[angelbob]

You've pretty much nailed why JRuby catches on so well. It's still not fast for a JVM language, but it's blazing for Ruby - plus you can call through to Java where you need/want it.

[radu_floricica]

> Java is fast ...

God, what a flashback. Seems like yesterday people were saying left and right that java has no chance because it's an interpreted language.

[mattmanser]

What's odd is that here in the UK it's C# dominating the enterprise landscape. Or at least that's the impression I've always got from the jobs mentioned to me and the developers I've met. I've met PHP, C#, Python, Rails devs but never a Java developer.

The thing about .Net not being awesome compared to Java, it wasn't but that's not true any more, .Net is awesome compared to Java. There's a hell of a team behind the C# language at the moment and they're about 3-4 years ahead of Java in terms of new language features.

Not that I've any delusions about .Net coming to dominate in the web space, but it's more likely than Java imo which looks old now when I read it, though admittedly I don't keep up on it that well.

[jcromartie]

C# is in demand, because C# developers are rarer. Also it's a more interesting language to work in and has features that attract smart developers.

Java developers are abundant, and mostly employed in the dark corners of big enterprise software shops you've never heard of.

[rbanffy]

I have seen some very dark corners reserved for C# programmers around Sharepoint deployments...

[rjd]

I worked on a major financial application that had a consumer front end written in share point... it was horrific... easily the worst thing I had seen in 15 years of developing.

The guys that put it together created a situation where there multiple front ends to one database. Each front end generated GUIDs and rammed them into the shared database. My work was to fix the sync'ing problem derived from this.

Most poeple I know refer to it as scare point now, as it scares most developers ;)

[moondowner]

That depends on the country. In the Balkans for example, there are more .NET than Java developers, though both of them are in high numbers. The thing is, a lot of students after graduating are trying to get a job as a .NET developer thinking that it's easier, and after that they stick to that job.

And the second sentence, I have to disagree with you. I can't find the link right now (when I find i'll give you another reply), but there was report on USA's most wanted ICT jobs for 2010, and it was sorted per regions in Top 5 format, and the common 3 out of 5 everywhere were: Java, SAP, Oracle. .NET was 4rd or 5th almost on all of them. Second, there are more big companies with Java departments than with .NET departments (and some of them have both).

[antihero]

Down here in Brighton a shitload of Python/Django is also happening, too :)

[chaostheory]

In my experience C# the language is much better than Java the language, but the .NET ecosystem doesn't even close to Java's ecosystem of both open source and proprietary libraries and frameworks. There's been too many times where I had to write my own stuff for C#, where in Java it'd already be mature, fully tested, and free to use right away.

[bad_user]

http://www.ikvm.net/

[sceptre]

I think the actual reason is not because of .NET awesomeness, Companies in UK have always invested in Microsoft technologies. I remember back in early 2000s, UK was the only place with a great demand for VB developers. and majority of the current work being advertised, involve rewriting the existing VB applications in C#.

[recoiledsnake]

What you said is increasingly true in the US too, from what I have seen.

[jebblue]

Not from what I've seen. There are tons of Java jobs. There's good reason for that. I can run Java apps on any OS. That's pretty important. It runs fast these days. Eclipse totally rocks and most if not all of what you need is totally free in the Eclipse world.