We've made a few staffing changes at Javalobby over the last few days. First of all, I would like to welcome Daniel Spiewak onto the Javalobby editor team. Those of you familiar with our Eclipsezone site will recognize Daniel, since he has been one of the editors on that site. We recently moved him to Javalobby, so expect to see a lot more of Daniel's articles on both Javalobby, and in the newsletter.

This week, Daniel discusses the topic of Java's longevity. Languages are sort of like stars (the cosmic kind. Not the hollywood kind). There are giant clouds where new stars are born. Some of them will be fortunate enough to reach critical mass, and fusion will start in their cores. Others will never gain enough mass for fusion to start. For the ones that do gain critical mass, they shine very brightly... For a period of time. but eventually, they begin to die as they run out of fusion material. Like stars, no programing language can be expected to shine brightly forever.  We cannot expect that Java will be any different. Not Java the language that is. But the story is different for the Java platform. Even as interest in the Java language declines, the Java platform is growing faster than ever. So what does the future of Java really look like? - Mike, Managing Editor

Will Java Die?

I seem to be living a theme this week, constantly running into articles and/or discussions regarding the future of Java.  Most of these fall into one of two camps:

• There's the "Java's doomed everyone panic camp"
• …and there's the rose-colored "Java will live forever everyone sing"

This theme actually even carried over into a conversation I was having with the rest of the team here at DZone.  We were discussing various technologies, and I casually voiced the opinion that Java is on the decline.  Of course we've seen it before with other languages.  Even the mighty C only lasted 20-odd years before being eclipsed by C++ and (shortly thereafter) Java.  Java's just barely into its second decade and already we're seeing signs of age and dissatisfaction amongst its patrons.

I was just about to launch into a discourse on modern language features and what developers expect from a 21st century language, when Rick Ross cut across me with the statement that "Java isn't just a language, it's a platform."  Considering the emphasis which has been put on this little factoid over the last few months, I'm surprised I had forgotten it.  He's right; Java is much more than just the syntax which defines it.  We've already seen dozens of languages either ported to or written specifically to run on the JVM.  After all, VMs are hard to write, why not use someone else's?  Efforts like JRuby and Scala show that regardless of the popularity of the Java syntax or even the underlying libraries, the platform itself will live on.  But will it carry the language along with it?

What we're seeing today in Java is unprecedented (to my knowledge).  We're beginning to reach a point where the popularity of the underlying platform is overarching the popularity of the language which necessitated it in the first place.  This means that the situation is somewhat different from the other "language death scenes" we've witnessed over the past three decades.  Could it be that Java itself may decline, but remain significant in a supporting role for other languages built on the platform?

At this point, I'd have to say that I really don't know.  I've got to be one of three people left on earth who actually likes the Java syntax.  I think it's elegant, expressive and pleasantly restrictive.  However, even I'm sorely tempted by the whiles of hybrid functional-object oriented paradigms and extreme meta-programming.  Really, the only way Java can hope to avoid fading into the mists of time may be in one (or more) of the languages designed to run on the JVM and interoperate with its libraries.  Time will tell.

NetBeans to Become the Dominant Ruby IDE?

I ran across this article today, loudly proclaiming the merits of NetBeans's Ruby support.  It's got a lot of fairly nice screenshots and - if you can get past the somewhat abrasive tone and random name-calling - is actually a fairly decent review.  He seemed to  be lacking information on certain Eclipse features (such as the incremental find feature, as well as a recent version of one of the Subversion providers), but that's beside the point.  I was more interested in this article as it relates to a trend I've been seeing quietly building amongst new Ruby users: they really like NetBeans.

I mean, it used to be that TextMate was the only "official" way to go if you were going to write Ruby code.  After all, DHH himself used it in his famous "15 minute blog" screencast, so it must be good!  But as good as TextMate, jEdit and all of those wonderful "pure text" tools may be, they're just too hard core for the incoming Ruby beginner.  As pointed out in the article, one often needs a real IDE, especially when learning a new language or framework.  It seems that NetBeans Ruby is poised to become the de facto IDE in the Ruby-space.

Personally, I tried NetBeans Ruby a while back and was heartily unimpressed with it.  Getting past all of the little NetBeans quirks which throw me off every time (coming from an Eclipse workflow), I didn't really see any value in the tools it provided beyond what was available elsewhere.  At the time even jEdit provided a more accurate and performant content assist feature for Ruby.  It seems this has changed.

It would take a lot to convince me to abandon my text editor for writing Ruby code, but first class Ruby tool support might be enough.  I'm interested to hear about your experiences with the NetBeans Ruby IDE if you've tried it.  I'm especially interested in those of you who've been using it for an extended period of time, and in the thoughts of those hard-core TextMate lovers who switched to NetBeans Ruby.  Please drop me a line at daniel@dzone.com and let me know what you think!

Until next time,
Daniel Spiewak
daniel@dzone.com