Hi John,
The Linux kernel is getting a better multi-threading model that should make a world of difference in the speed of java on Linux. I think the following article is off of the UT home page:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5094774.htmlJava would be a good choice.
One language that everyone seems to be overlooking is perl. It has been around for a long time, and is a full featured development language which specializes in three tier web apps. It is cross-platform across all OS/s and based on what I seen from reading the want ads in the technical magazine, is in great demand by employers.
In a recent post concerning a serve of language usage, perl rank third or forth in the list of about 12 languages and perl usage is on the increase. Perl had about 17% of the total, just ahead of VB or VBA which had around 14%. Python was near the bottom with only around 2.7% .
With IDEs like komodo which runs on windows and Linux with Sun Solaris support on the way, it should be given consideration. Komodo won Linux World award this year for best IDE on Linux. Also, it is based on the Mozilla browser engine which has been greatly improved. I am using Mozilla Firebird for my browser and Mozilla stand alone Thunderbird as my email client. The speed under window is now close to that of Opera, and it is even faster under Linux that Windows. It's easy to install whether using windows or Linux. You should give it a try.
I hope Komodo will adopt the Firebird engine in the near future.
LelandJ
