Java is the SUV of programming tools

Readers of my dev-blog will know that I am no fan of the philosophies behind the Java family of web development envionments.

It seems that I am in good company, with one of the Grandfathers of database-backed websites, Philip Greenspun, writing this article comparing Java with an SUV. Unwieldy for 90% of tasks, and not actually appropriate for that last 5% of tasks that require something more powerful or specialised.

So why is it being rammed down the throat of the development community?

This Advogato thread suggests that it is not ignominious for a language to quietly die. Eiffel, Algol and Pascal are languages that have died honoroubly - maintaining a small niche where they are appropriate and appreciated. Java is no longer operating in the niche that the original designers intended, and it survived in it's early stages only because of Sun's muscle and the feeling that it was a way to avoid Microsoft. Of course you can avoid Microsoft with many other equally as portable and much better languages.