Moving Ahead

We may never again see a perfect storm like the one that ushered in Java. You shouldn't look for one. Instead, you should learn from the success of Java, and start to understand the factors that led to its success. Minimally, I believe the next commercially successful programming language will need to satisfy four major criteria:

• It will need to establish a significant community. You won't see broad adoption unless the adopter can achieve relative safety.

• It will need to be portable. Java's virtual machine has raised the bar for languages that follow.

• Some economic incentive must justify the movement. Currently, productivity to me looks like the logical economic force, but others may be lurking out there, like wireless computing or data search.

• It will need demonstrable technical advantages. This is actually the least important of the major criteria.

I don't think most of us can possibly thoroughly understand the success of Java. It's easy to overestimate the role of the language and to underestimate the importance of the JVM and the community. In the next chapter, we'll continue to look at the crown jewels of Java in more detail, or the foundation for the most successful programming language ever.