It is hard not to take this as a vacuous article, one launched in an attempt to fill space and time within the context of riding the wave of a temporarily increased and slanted focus on this language - it seems to say a lot, but fundamentally it says nothing while it politically manouvres the writer in to a position where one can only feel there is an attempt to create a distance between the critic and the abstract (as in art) criticism...
I doubt (hopefully) that there are many who steer projects that look at any language as an eternal cure all - unless, that is, they are the type of people who are quite happy taking placebos' in place of apropriate medication... And I do doubt that there are any in the industry who have not had periods of dealing with all kinds of diverse issues and problems with every language - from Assembly all the way up to more abstract deliveries, or in fact any individual tool - from Databases to Graphics applications. (I remember a time when MySQL promoted the lack of transactions as a positive feature, and there are fundamental issues in the sector related to aspects like impedence mismatch, etc, etc, etc - What I am hinting at here is that all things in this industry are dynamic and progressive, even though at time many will only wrongly perceive regression).
There are a multitude of languages, meta languages, translators and various other tools with specific objectives, specific strengths and specific weaknesses - and these are deployed/integrated in appropriate environments with a great deal of due consideration. And with the dynamic divergence(s) in designs of underlying platforms - os', processors, network cards, disks, etc, and the requirements and demands of users, each language can only attempt to be as generic as possible, as safe as possible, and as applicable as possible with respect to framed/stated needs under specific conditions. (Hence the availability of things like RealTime facilities in Java... hmpf).
Even when dealing with something as fundamental as C, deploying to a heterogenous environment, ensures any producer would have to deal with comparatively the same fudamental cross platform issues - and difficulties met, that would appear unique and fresh to each individual team, are usually a lot greater than anything a language that is cross platform off the bat can give. Hence in cases of complex integration - languages/"pooled resources" like haXe/Java/etc exist to abstract such inescapable difficulties.
Why do you teach "da youf" with cross platform tools? - Because you are not only teaching them a programming language, you are also charged with introducing them to the various other aspects, the latter of which even slant towards philosophies, that are related to being in this industry. What they do with the information is up to their abilities, further training, their desires/focus and the problems they meet. You are also trying to get them productive in the safest and fastest possible way in the midst of a multitude of available choices. The slant is therefore towards the best solution/tool that is able to deal with a multitude of requirements under the above conditions. And I am not saying all of this as a Java fan, because I definitely am not.
Selecting any language as a solution - i.e., making statements such as Java has a problem - "Yeah, that is why I use Python! It rocks," does no more than display the naivity of the individual making the statement - when in fact we are all charged with dealing with ever growing systemic complexities.
One can only presume that what is inherently described in the article is less about the failure of Jave and more about a desire to ram square pegs in to round holes. Java is suitable for what Java is suitable for, under the conditions and the multitude of difficulties that institutions, companies and individuals, face daily in a collective quest to develop and integrate complex and growing heterogenous systems/requirements.
The reason why we are professionals is to navigate through such difficulties/problems while understanding the limitations related to doing so - that is where we gain a foothold in the industry as it is and are found to be necessary, and indeed it is from dealing with difficulties that we find our skills and are able to gain from discovered opportunities.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
