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I'm not so sure he's got all the necessary traits nailed, but, it's still an interesting read.

When you conclude with: "Which one...well, that's hard to say, isn't it? In the meantime I will continue to program happily and productively in Java." Why bothering writing the post in the first place. It reads like a brain fart, "oh all this shit to think about and waste time talking about, but hell back to work"

Hmm...you were expecting an actual recommendation? I was really saying something more along the lines of "I haven't seen the best yet...", and so I continue to wait. Java, for all its detractors, is still a good language, and continues to be my main development language (and not just for economic reasons). Thinking about what qualities the "next" language should have isn't a waste of time: it certainly helps frame the debate in a much more constructive way than the "my language is better than yours" rabble.

You framed your post starting with: "There has been a lot of talk in the last year or two about Java losing ground to newer languages and about which language is going to replace Java as the dominant language going into the next decade." Losing ground? what does this mean? Java was never the only language, and will never be the only language. During the time Java grew up, MS had VB, and there was Perl, Python, PHP and a slew of other languages available during this time. Why is now different? Is all of a sudden Java less liked as a language because some loud but few people moved on to other languages. Ruby and PHP have been around as long as Java, the concept of NEXT language is moot. If I misunderstand your point, forgive my ignorance, but I think posts that question Java in a ways that frame it like, "there is a lot of talk", "some people say" and the best of all, "the percentages show", really has no point except baiting. If you want to debate about what's next, think outside languages; because at the end of the day it's all about the platform.

Why is now different? Well, perhaps it's the fact that many of the many of the disruptive innovations of Java (virtual machine, garbage collection, etc.) are now pretty much taken for granted. Perhaps it's just the old cliche that "familiarity breeds contempt", after more than 10 years of living with Java? Regardless, when people like Bruce Tate or Ted Neward publish articles about moving on from Java, or when Bruce Eckel says that Java is or should be at an evolutionary "dead-end", it gets your attention. They may be the loud minority, but do exert an influence over the quieter majority. As I said in the blog, I think that Java as a language is still very much thriving but there is a window opening for another language to come along. This is not an indictment of Java (I am still very much a "Java guy"), it's just a recognition that technology and ideas evolve. Eventually any language, no matter how good, will get replaced by a newer one that learns from the mistakes of the previous ones and incorporates new ideas. When and why are hard to predict; I don't think it will be in the near future.

You make a good point about the platform, which I probably did not emphasize enough in the post. Java really pioneered the idea of a language being an entire platform (and it's one of the reasons that--sad to say--"individual artist" languages like Perl will have a hard time competing against languages that are sponsored by larger organizations). When I hear people like Charles Nutter or John Rose talk about how aggressive/predictive optimizations can be made in a dynamically compiled language, I realize that the JVM platform has an extremely bright future, and any (mid-level) language being developed today would do well to stand on its tall shoulders.