Java the new Cobol?

Had come across this article from InfoWorld:
2007's No. 1 most underreported tech story: Java is becoming the new Cobol

As you can expect, this article attract many Java supporter to defence Java. The comments section is more entertaining to read compare to the content.

Most claim that most of the technology (Ruby on Rails, PHP, AJAX) quote by Bill Synder is not comparable to Java. So Java still not replaceable yet.

It is true that most of the technology/language quoted is only focus on particular area (i.e. Ruby, PHP, AJAX for web, Android for mobile, .NET for business), and only .NET is comparable with Java that it is really general purpose.

However IMHO, Java being a general purpose language (and it is actually more than just language, but already a platform) does not means that language like Ruby, PHP can not threat Java.

When development job become more and more specialist, it is not weird that many developers only develop web/mobile in their job. In such scenario, It is not a good idea to tell this developer to develop with Java just because Java is general purpose.

However, I still dont think Java is the new Cobol. Java is popular not only because it is backed by Sun, and some big player like IBM, BEA, etc. But it is due to the open source community.

Log4j, Hibernate, Executors framework, ... All these open source API/framework had enrich Java platform from time to time. And not to mention Spring Framework that offer a different approach to develop Java enterprise application.

For those who like Ruby, Phyton, etc, there are clone in Java such as JRuby,JPhyton.

Java community simply give developer too many choices. And same for IDE, developers simply have too many choice. But sad to be say, I still not yet come across any Java IDE that as good as MS Visual Studio for RAD. If there is one, Java for sure not the new Cobol.