Well - I for one am very interested - I am struggling with what direction to head both for my personal skill base and as a wise choice for my company's application. There are a few JAVA bashers around - generally touting the JAVA isn't stable, it's buggy, not mature enough, doesn't know where it's going, etc. - yet the biggest job opportunities I see in both the paper and the big job sites are for JAVA/Web developers (as well as DBAs).

My biggest concerns in picking a tool (after the core funcitonality/performance/stability issues of course) - are in no particualr order:

-- longevity of the dev. tool / environment - to maximize learning curve investment
-- industry acceptance in as much as it has critical mass and I'm not fighting "your tool is dead" wars all the time and I can find developers and resources
-- cross-platform is a MAJOR issue for me - I'm talking Win/Macintosh in particualar
-- internet capabilities - especially ASP (app service provision) friendliness

JAVA 'seems' to be the ticket for at least some of these issues. I see things like the thinkfree office suite, and know of quite a few bigtime players who are heavy into JAVA. So ... if JAVA is so problematic - why the heck is that the hot job market? Why is everyone doing it? Can someone point me to the articles on JAVA being so awful or are we just passing around what we "wish was true" based on unsubstantiated anecdotes?

On the flip side - I do see speed problems with the virtual machine and I haven't yet been able to get a good answeer to the question of why a JAVA app on the web is any better than a C++ app or a VB app?

So - I'm interested in whatever anyone has to say on any of this - noting also - that I am a novice with JAVA, VB, and the web stuff in general.

Ken



>>Thought I would start a new thread regarding the merits of the above languages. There seems to be a lot of disucssion of various language pros/cons with >the advent of the impending new VFP 7 release.
>
>>In the near future I will be able to use a large UNIX box for web development. Since neither VFP or VB run on UNIX/Linux I am probably
>>going to learn to program in Java.
>
>>What are the reasons to learn or not learn one of the languages?
>>What are some other languages choices that run applications on both UNIX and NT servers? I have listed some minor pros and cons for each. I'm sure there are >may others out there. Your thoughts?
>
>
>>VFP:
>>Pros - been around long time, OOP, data centric
>>Cons - Windows only, not as widely used as VB
>
>>VB:
>>Pros - large number of developers, M$ favorite, VBA used in Office
>>Cons - Windows only, not data centric
>
>>Java
>>Pros - OOP, platform independent, widely used on the Net
>>Cons - immature language, not data centric
>
>
>... and your point would be.... what?