I haven't worked with Java (other than Java script on my web site) and really have no interest in it one way or another.

I can report on a very unscientific poll taken about Java. I attend the Software Forum meetings in Palo Alto almost every month. This is the largest group of software developers in Silicon Valley and I think it has the best speakers and is on the leading edge more than any other meetings I have attended. There were only 3 people in the audience of several hundred that had anything to do with Java. No one knew of any big projects with it. Contrast this with a few years ago when almost everyone was working with it or planned to work with it or their company was doing something with it. I was left with the feeling that Java will slowly go away. The last meeting had a world famous author (mostly articles in magazines) and venture capitalist. The speaker said that McNealy (Sun CEO) killed the language with his arrogance. There was a lot more but I think that gets the point accross. I would not describe the software forum members as being 100% pro-Microsoft.

>I hope others on the thread also pass opinions on Java as the "next" language for a monolinguistic pleb.
>rgds
>john