[krutulis]

I find it ironic that many of the arguments implied for "COBOL is absurd" can be turned to make the case that "Java is absurd." Both have a legacy of accumulated complexity, and some programmers dislike the buden this creates. Others are genuinely concerned that Oracle is positioning itself to profit from the accumulated legacy in the same way the author complains that mainframe vendors have done. The community of people that tends to develop around a language matters immensely in shaping the character of the code that inevitably accumulates.

Java has a history of conservative implementation choices (E.g., see Guy Steele's account of some of those choices at [1]) Having lived through both, the Java world of a dozen years ago reminded me so much of the COBOL world of the 80's, I personally chose to move on to more innovative communities. I still occassionaly write Java, and am always struck by how memory-intensive it is and by how it always seems to abstract by spreading things out rather than by compression.

Regardless of your own preferences and choices, my recommendation to younger programmers would be to work hard to avoid getting stuck in any language rut. If you think of yourself as a "Java programmer," then you might already be a casualty of your circumstances.

[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.lightweight/2274