David,
You're right. Good languages die hard, as COBOL has proved. I believ
those who declare JAVA to be the ultimate language are missing an important
point: Only time will tell. I remember when almost EVERYONE (including me)
believed PL/I would obliterate COBOL. Right.
Will JAVA be all its touted as? Who knows. I've decided to use C++ Builder
to redevelop our medical system in-- because I have to make a decision now
and I think JAVA is just too immature.
It seems to me the langauge has almost become a secondary issue -- to me,
the important decision is which IDE will be used. Borland's was the hands-down
winner; now, I can decide whether it will be Delphi, or C++B or Java. And
I can envision using SOME JAVA to do what it does best; but I don't see
it as the ideal general purpose language at this point.
By the way, I think this IDE approach is a valid one for selecting the
development tool(s) to use, and may be a big selling point to larger
organizations. Rather than learning the language, one focuses on learning
the IDE and components -- the language is almost incidental. There is little
difference between writing Delphi & C++ Builder software. While I prefer
the syntax of C, I could just as easily live with PASCAL. In this regard
it seems Borland is miles ahead of any competitor. "Who cares what language--
we do them in all, in a logical, consistent format". Use C++ for this,
PASCAL for that, and Java for other stuff. The end product looks the same.
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