I think that's true in some instances. But if you want to keep the Latin analogy going, you have to acknowledge that Latin stuck around because an entrenched organization continued to use it long after it had lost vulgar relevance. And Latin's high status fooled the intellectuals of the day into thinking that it was the pure, holy tongue, and had undue and sometimes destructive influences on the development of other languages. This happened precisely because people tried to apply the grammatical patterns of Latin to languages that were structurally different.

I'm not saying that Java (or Latin, for that matter) doesn't have a place in the future, but I just hope that it doesn't continue to have undue influence on the evolution of programming language and methodologies simply because it is a revered institution.

"but I just hope that it doesn't continue to have undue influence on the evolution of programming language and methodologies simply because it is a revered institution."

I would tweak that to "... programming language and methodologies accepted by the mainstream...". Java is already not stopping many very different streams of development from existing at all, but the question is whether anything that isn't Algol-derived can be the next big mainstream language. That syntax is really starting to creak under the load of all the stuff that even C# loads onto it, and the Next Big Enterprise Language really needs to not be that way. (I make no claims as to what it should actually be, though.)

Good point. I don't have a good idea either what the Next Big Enterprise Language should be, but I'll bet that it will not be what it should be. I think an "Enterprise Language" is bound to be disappointing because it's a solution to an ugly problem: "How do we make developers interchangeable?"

I guess the rest of us will just continue along doing what we do with whatever tool we need for the job.

Brilliant developers are interchangeable to some extent - the result is descent every time regardless of who's doing it this time.

But I'm afraid they want something different.

I was actually thinking of the medical profession, but yes, your point is well taken (I take it you refer to the church).

Okay, that analogy makes sense. As a technical and taxonomic language, yeah something really stable like Latin or Greek (also used a lot in medicine) is probably best. And yes, I was referring to the Church. Fortunately, Sun doesn't have that kind of influence or power, even if developers as a group can be quite dogmatic.

I wouldn't say that the medical profession uses as a "dead" language that is "no longer under active development". In fact, they invent new words in it all the time.