The Null Device
2010/4/4
Having recently acquired the Java language, Oracle are looking for a way to make it hip and exciting again and attract youthful, cutting-edge developers (they're the ones with the brightly dyed hair and facial piercings). However, that may be a big ask:
Java has evolved from a groundbreaking, revolutionary language platform to something closer to a modern-day version of Cobol. In just 15 years, it has moved beyond maturity into a silver-haired stage of staid dependability. Java offers stability, not agility; reliability, not innovation. It's the language of large, enterprise software projects, ones that link legacy systems and promise high availability.Other than being the corporate enterprise standard, Java is also a rather conservative language, a C++ with training wheels designed to equalise the playing field by slowing the virtuoso coder down to what his pointy-haired manager can understand, and not encouraging dangerous agility as, say, Python and Ruby do. It being owned by Oracle probably doesn't help either.
Christian Voice, a right-wing Christian Fundamentalist group in the UK has rejected all major UK parties because they're too pro-EU, pro-secularist and "pro-sodomy", and rejected the British National Party because they phrase their claims of white supremacy in the language of evolution. You can't make this sort of thing up.