Paul Graham wrote an essay about why Microsoft was irrelevant. We had the same discussion then. It seems there is relevance as far as market share and jobs in i

Paul Graham wrote an essay about why Microsoft was irrelevant. We had the same discussion then. It seems there is relevance as far as market share and jobs in industry is concerned, and irrelevance as far as setting the direction for the future of the industry is concerned. I think it is obvious that Java the language is perfectly relevant as far as market share and jobs are concerned. I would be surprised if Java the language is relevant in any way with respect to the future of programming. Unlike the author, I do not make the argument that if Java the language is irrelevant, Ruby the language must be relevant. Just as Java can be popular while being irrelevant to the future of programming, Ruby may well become more and more popular while also being irrelevant to the future of programming. Smalltalk showed us that the future of programming may be dominated for decades by the ideas in language with only modest success today.