There is an article at InfoWorld titled Java is becoming the new Cobol.

Before I start, let me say that I welcome the right tool/language for the right type and size of project. I just hate misleading and inaccurate reports.

In his article, author Bill Snyder writes a number of things that are misleading, maybe he just was lazy and didn’t do his homework.

The author writes:

“Info-Tech Research Group said its survey of 1,850 businesses found .Net the choice over Java among businesses of all sizes and industries, thanks to its promotion via Visual Studio and SharePoint.”

First, the Info-Tech Research Group seems biased as it surveyed mainly Microsoft shops (only Microsoft shops will choose .Net, Visual Studio and SharePoint). The survey is NOT representative of how things really are out there.

He also writes:

“Java is losing ground to Ruby on Rails, PHP, AJAX and other cool new languages”

Bill calls AJAX a language, which is not. Then mixes “web application frameworks”, with “languages”, and “techniques to asynchronously request information over HTTP”. Wrong.

Bill also writes:

“Java, the oldest new programming language around”

Well, not accurate either. Let’s see when each of the items he listed above were first released:

  • PHP: 1994
  • Java: 1995
  • Ruby: 1995
  • AJAX: 1998 (dynamic HTML), 2000-2002 (XML HTTP Request across various browsers), 2005 (AJAX term coined), 2006 (W3C draft spec)
  • Ruby on Rails: 2004

The article then says:

“Another area of weakness is the development of mobile applications. Java’s UI capabilities and its memory footprint simply don’t measure up, says Samir Shah, CEO of software testing provider Zephyr. No wonder the mobile edition of Java has all but disappeared, and no wonder Google is creating its own version (Android).”

Which is another inaccurate description. Anyone in the mobile space, I mean, anyone who knows the mobile space, knows that the most predominant mobile platform for local applications is Java. BTW Bill, I mean, Samir, Android is based on the Java language. I also find it ironic that Samir, the CEO of Zephyr who is quoted in this article about Java being the new COBOL and loosing ground, yet has his company Zephyr looking to hire J2EE folks…

And not that it is really super important, but for the purpose of accuracy, COBOL is spelled using all capital letters since it is an acronym (for Common Business-Oriented Language). ;-)

Anyways, in short, use the method and language that better fits your project. In my case, none of my products are based on .Net, nor Visual Studio stuff, and instead are based on Linux OS, and the Java language and Java-based frameworks, and PHP, JavaScript, and are investigating Ruby on Rails for certain front-ends.

Related resources of interest:

ceo