> PHP, Ruby, Python, Scala and even Java are under active development so you will have to make choices about which version you are going to stick to for the tim

> PHP, Ruby, Python, Scala and even Java are under active development so you will have to make choices about which version you are going to stick to for the time being. Java probably shouldn't be included in that list. The language is evolving, but I don't think I've encountered anything that breaks between three major version releases (i.e. Java 1.4 code works equally well with a compiler for Java 5 or 6). All of the other languages (possibly with the exception of Scala, which I have little knowledge of) have radically changed the core language between minor releases. The PHP project has been particularly guilty of changing subtle semantic interpretations of things in releases that are on the order of "bug fix" updates. This is the fundamental difference to me. Java has a published spec for the core language. Some of the libraries might move around a little bit, but even most of those are relatively stable. There are plenty of other reasons not to use Java, but if you want a language that is fundamentally "stable", then Java is best-of-breed.