[tetha]

Java is simply becoming the next C. For a reason, in my opinion, since the languages share quite a few traits both on the language level and the ecosystem level. Both are fast. Both have a rock solid execution system which sometimes feels backwards compatible to the first punch card made of rock (gcc vs JVM). Both of them have huge communities having significant infrastructural services and other huge code bases developed in them (linux kernel, application servers, databases in both teams). The big improvement of java would be a higher programmer safety.

And to be fair, neither language is the prettiest, shiniest and fanciest for it's time, but they get the darned job done.

[fat0wl]

you (& bitL as well) make some fair points but I actually (maybe because I'm newer to Java?) have quite a different experience with it. The XML setup seems minimal now (sure it's all there but most stuff is now handled with reasonable default configs & annotations).

Take Jax-Rs is a good example. Once you understand it you're just like "Ohhhhh this is the same way Rails/whatever framework handles json requests but I can add in all this non-linear logic without forcing it to play nicely within a presumptuous design pattern". Adding many data sources & logic flows is easy.

Bottom line is that I feel like Java can never really be the next C because fundamentally its much safer and becoming way more human readable. It toes the line well -- you can code minimal stuff similar to the scripting languages, or you can drop years of work/research into optimization for high-transaction algorithms knowing that the platform won't abandon you.

(By the way, I am personally hoping for Clojure or node.js to take over the front-end of the stack & then just using Java to do any heavy lifting that is left over)