http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/the_next_big_jvm_language1

It talks about future candidates for the next big jvm language and (unsurprisingly) it mentions Fantom (this is jodastephen after all). He does mention that the type system seems to put people off but I'm not sure what does he means by that?

I read it as if the mix of automatic casts, type inference, limited generics and dynamic typing makes some people disregard the language up front. Indeed, I have colleagues who, after diving deeper down goes "Oh, it NOT dynamic?!".

However it could be argued that Fan is in line with several other language trends in bridging dynamic and static, whereas a language like Scala goes the other way of a compromise and tries to model a world that's even more strongly typed. Isn't Scala about the only recent modern language to do so?

Personally I feel if you really want dynamic, Groovy is near perfect, I like Fantom approach here which I feel "mostly static but you can do dynamic when needed".

You can't please everybody either way.

Yesterday On twitter I read about Fantom "Yes. I had a look at Fantom, but didn't quite like it. Lack of parametric polymorphism was a major turnoff."

I mean stuff like that make me cringe, I mean everybody can have their own opinion on what they want in a language ... but as far as what you NEED ... hey assembler worked, and for guys saying stuff like that, there is Scala which has everything in it, but to me is just way to complex too gain common acceptance and be used properly by most.

A lot of the people talking languages are prominent language geeks, researcher and teachers, but Like Stephen pointed out the gazillions of programmers writing company code (millions of corporate bees) are MOSTLY happy with Java and don't care about nomads and stuff like that.

I often Feel like Fantom is a lot like Java would be if it was rewritten from scratch right now, without all the earlier mistakes, and "new feature while staying backward compatible" hacks, and API's that got super cluttered overtime.

To me that's a huge Fantom strength, mostly driven by Brian and Frank smart decisions, and most of the non language geek people are much more likely to start experimenting with Groovy or Fantom (if they heard of them) than scala IMO.

The problem is that the elite IS able to conquer the complexity and is also very outspoken. These are obviously the kind attracted by Scala.

However, just because the mainstream is less experimenting and more quiet, doesn't mean they don't desire or deserve better tools... I find that Stephen Colebourne does an excellent job at representing these people by not being afraid of being type-cast i.e. by Ted Neward and his infamous "we will always need people flipping burgers".

I really wish Google would've bought Sun, put their heels down and rebooted the whole thing - that's kind of what Microsoft did and not a day goes by where I don't miss features of that platform in my daily Java work.

@tcolar Few people take APIs into account. Which is funny because most of Java's problems are caused by very basic and unavoidable idiotic APIs. Plus, if Fantom gets this right it's a major turnoff because they're not the same ;).

I almost agree with everything Stephen says.

@casperbang : Kinda wondering If Google might end-up making a "new java" anyway, because they already have the android/dalvik base and with the lawsuit stuff they might have to go further away from Java anyway ... and possibly in the process making it something better ?

@Katox: I agree. Java 1.1 API's where OK but became cluttered big time. I like Fantom's, I feel when good naming is used, it's just easy to learn, almost intuitive (unlike windows c++ crazy names)

For what it's worth, I am not generally the type to experiment with new languages, but I am dying to use Fantom on my next project. At work, it will commonly happen that a developer who formerly worked with a more dynamic language will start going off about Java and I'll say "yeah, in Fantom that's really easy."

Not to wander off topic, but I wonder if a Maven Fantom Plugin (using FFI) might be a good gateway drug for existing Java developers...my team has already started using Groovy for a lot of our new UI code because the syntax is nicer and the type safety isn't as big a deal on the front end.

It would obviously be way too expensive to convert our whole code base away from Maven and into pods/FFI, but I'd love to start writing new back end services in Fantom and have Maven compile them into plain old .class files like it can so easily with Groovy.

It wouldn't be as nice as using pure Fantom, but it would be nicer than using pure Java like we are now.