What do we leave behind us? - 10 Years of Java.

I find this article quite revealing. It asks a crucial question: in the past 10 years, since Java was on the market, what was it’s contribution to the application’s world? What is the outstanding application used by everyone that is built with Java? Can we live without it, would it be a loss not to have Java with us?

I personally think that the author of the article is too hard and the idea he express is not based on reality and this is because you cannot judge a technology by asking how many “popular” applications it created. Nobody asks about how popular is a medical application, but yet, everybody that is in that particular hospital has his life depending on it (just to give an example).

Still, I find the article revealing for developers: it raises a few questions: Do we use the proper tool to generate a great application? Do we need to learn and support a specific technology just because it is “cool” (or just because it is not Microsoft :-) ). And the hardest question: what do we leave behind after 10 years of working on a project? Is it… used? Was it worthy? Or it just paid our salaries…

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2005/12/02/10-years-of-java-for-what/