Fourteen years ago, a marketing genius at Sun Microsystems changed the name of a cross-platform experimental language from the very dependable-sounding “Oak” to the hyper-caffeinated moniker “Java,” and proved once again why engineers are scared of the power that the marketing department can unleash when lightning strikes.
That era of unbridled hype is long gone, and if anyone at Sun wanted to rebrand the language today to accurately reflect its stature in the computing world, they might switch it back to Oak. Although the Java language is not truly ubiquitous, it is found in many, many different places, and it has a strong reputation for being steadfast and well-engineered. Java code may never dominate all computers or all platforms, but it is as close to a lingua franca as there is.
Java first found a dominant role in the server farm, which remains the primary place where people expect to find a Java VM. The big servers are also the main home for all of Oracle’s creations, so it makes the combination an easy match. Although PHP coders may love MySQL, many of the most serious projects for the most data-intensive businesses use Java wrapped around Oracle and this won’t change soon.
Read the whole story at http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/java-what-does-its-future-hold-978
