Java Kecil 2x

Pretty freaking sad that this language that was hyped to be the usurper and premiere Java-killer turned out to be just another ho-hum scripting framework whose advantages are quickly being assimilated by Java. I posted earlier about RIP: Ruby Hype. Now, the newest sign that the Ruby hype is slowing or decreasing is the flattening (and decrease) in the Tiobe index of this language.

Click thumbnail above for detailed image.

I cannot honestly say I’m sad about this. When I first met these Rubyistas last year they surprised me by their vehemence and scary obsession. The Jesus freaks have nothing on these guys, and if they honestly think people think they’re cool because they somehow know just another web framework, then I suggest the blu pill (or even the red one) to wake them up.

Some other old posts of mine about these nuts:

• R-U-B-Y is M-A-D (April 7, 2006)
• Ruby on smartphones and PDAs (April 1, 2006)

Ok, on to stuff that actually matters - Grails, JRuby, and Java FX

ADDENDUM: In response to some emails that have come my way (I had been disabling comments), NO i never said anywhere that Ruby is DYING. However, the hype about Ruby is certainly leveling off, as it would have no matter how much the hype anyways. This could be due to several factors, including the fact that there really is no large job market for it, it really IS just another language and web framework (nothing radical there), and the rise of Grails/Groovy, JRuby and JavaFX in Javaland might be taking away some of its thunder. In the end, RoR will continue to cater to a middling size crowd, but honestly folks, did anyone with at least half a mind actually think that it would usurp the role of Java?

It’s weird, but two years or so ago, I remember that the number of posts on .NET in Javablogs was quite large. This was a couple years after Alan Williamson’s portentous “Java will be dead in 5 years” article in Java Developer’s Journal, and this big bad boogeyman obviously gave many nightmares to the inhabitants of Javaland.

Now, instead of panicked blogs about Redmond’s tamed Java alternative, we get panicked (and angry) blogs about the double R word.

It must be said that the Java ME world is only slightly better, mostly because the ubiquity and dominance of Java in this world, at least in the consumer markets, is almost without parallel. And yet there were noises made about .NET compact framework once, and before that it was BREW that caused ice to form in the hearts of Java Jihadists. Today, there is some slight fear of Flash Lite, although this is tempered by the realization that the situation of Java ME is nowhere near that of Java applets in the late 1990s.

It’s a common theme in human nature that unless there is some external factor that incites fear, progress stalls, and I guess this is why Java nuts aren’t really happy unless there’s some boogeyman to drive the continued development of the enterprise platform.

Plus, what would Javablogs be without the incessant blogs about the end of Java. As the old saying goes, light-hearted and happy musical films sell, but horror films sell even better.