Related link: http://www.onjava.com


Let’s start with some disclaimers. I work in a small startup where we use Java as our primary programming language. I co-chair a Java Developer’s SIG in Silicon Valley. And I wrote an
O’Reilly book on Java RMI. So maybe I’m just a little too deeply enmeshed in the Java universe. And that, 5 years into my Java experience, I’ve gotten jaded.


But.


Does it strike anyone else that Java, which once was an interesting new language that had the potential to change the world, has become deeply boring ? That our lovely little language has become completely and utterly disassociated from what’s interesting and innovative in the computer industry?


The positive spin that people put on this is that “Java is maturing as a platform” or “Once things get really useful, they stabilize” or “SUN’s providing a computing layer so that other people can innovate; you’re looking for innovation in the wrong places.”


To which all I can say is “Maybe.”


But “web services” and “what’s new in JDBC” smells like death-warmed-over to me. We’ve gone from “write-once, run-anywhere” and a world of mobile code flowing over the network to “let’s do RPC in ASCII so that our legacy systems can exchange data.”


Maybe this is good. Maybe this is a sign that Java is, as so many pundits tell us, “growing up.” But, then again, maybe John Cougar Mellencamp nailed it when he sang (in The Authority Song):

Growing up leads to growing old
And then to dying
Ooo-ooh and dying to me
Don't sound like all that much fun.

Bored with Java? What do you plan to work on next?