Rhett Guthrie

Visual Basic is arguably the most successful programming language in the history of programming languages. The number of VB components and applications out there is staggering, and the number of VB programmers is even more so. However, there is a not so silent contender for the World's Most Popular Language. It's OO, multithreaded and Internet-ready. It's an expressive and flexible language capable of industrial-strength server-side computing and, for the C++ crowd, here's the real rub: it's idiot-proof. It's Java. Java not only promises enterprise solution-capable software, it promises to do so with VB-style ease of use and with an unrivaled adoption rate. Therein lies the central issue: The combination of ease of use, power and popularity makes Java an important language for the software engineering community. Consider distributed computing. There has been an evo... (more)