The Alex Handy story Study Predicts Upswing in Dynamic Language Use is old news, but when it's in a print publication like SD Times, then it starts to gain some traction. And it's one of those journalistic things: you can't repeat the obvious without some kind of "angle". And the arrival of a Forrester Research study gives SD Times a chance to restate the obvious to those who aren't paying attention.
I found the Forrester conclusions helpful. JavaScript (while annoying) is part of the browser, get over it. Ruby is growing quickly. PHP is slowly gaining acceptance in corporate IT circles.
I expect that PHP will go the way of Cold Fusion before too long. Why? It's effectively a Domain Specific Language (DSL) for web development. Narrowness of focus can breed a degree of contempt. Ruby (because of the Rails thing) may follow PHP and CFML into the corner with other IT darlings.
The COBOL-ness Factor
COBOL endures because your in-house IT people find that it works for Big Old Batch™, something they revere as the eternal essence data processing. They can make it work for interactive programming in CICS. And they can implement CICS-based web services. What's not to love about COBOL?
Java is tolerated because your in-house IT people can see that it's marginally valuable for certain kinds of web applications and web services. At some point, it slowly dawns on them that Java can be used for Big Old Batch. Then the lights come on the Java isn't all bad. Java has just enough COBOL-ness that it's tolerable.
Interestingly, I laid out the Java vs. COBOL decision for some folks recently. The top IT brass were not pleased with the idea of Java in batch. I thought I made it clear that Java for Big Old Batch applications totally rules -- it's the easiest way to build data warehouse ETL applications, for example.
They scratched their heads at batch Java. They gave me the "Really?" look. And then the top dog turns to her assistant and says. "Maybe we'll look into this as something else to learn." In essence deprecating Batch Java as "too outlandish" to discuss further with the nut-ball consultant.
Futures
SD Times and Forrester have mentioned dynamic languages. Now if ComputerWorld would just use the buzz-phrase a few more times, it might start to percolate through people's heads.
Until it gets mentioned a little more, It will be difficult for me to dance around the Elephant in the Saloon™. When comparing Java and COBOL, I feel compelled to mention that Java -- while light-years ahead of COBOL -- is not the state of the art. Java has an ecosystem of tools that makes a few marginally competent Java kiddies twice as productive as genius-level old-salt COBOL programmers. But it's still not Python, which seems to give you another 50% intellectual leverage advantage over Java.
A little more press coverage of dynamic languages will make my job easier. I'd rather do Python vs. Java vs. COBOL. Right now I have to lay low on the state of the art because -- to many of my clients -- Python seems too new and new == scary.