For the 90s, yes. That future happened and now we're looking at a new one. For as much as I dislike the language and most of the software built on the JVM, I

For the 90s, yes. That future happened and now we're looking at a new one. For as much as I dislike the language and most of the software built on the JVM, I do think it helped advance the world of application-level software development to a better place. Without it, people would likely have built the same memory-hungry, slow, and bloated software, but in C++ with all its added risks, lessened portability, and none of its advantages (except maybe better start-up times). There are more problems that need fixing, but Java at least solved some of them. Edit: Java, and other languages and systems like it, really. Java had the advantage that it was familiar to C++ programmers.