Thoughts On Java
An interesting post on Java. I think the comparison with COBOL is very apt, because despite the fact that few new projects are being started in Java it is so common in the enterprise I think we will all be supporting Java apps for years to come.
I think it is right that Java is not a bad language, its just that development practices are so unwieldy. The frameworks are huge and hard to work with, the core libraries are sparse and the JVM is slooow. But, as Russel says, if you are developing long running server processes. PHP is really unacceptable for this, your options are Java, .net or c/c++. And none of those are good options.