JavaI’ve been pretty verbal about Java going down the wrong path and my view that what Java should do is start having a ‘core’ which is just the real basics of the VM and the language and then a few profiles which specify what needs to be loaded, with the rest coming in on-demand based on the requirements of a given project.  The old ‘it needs to have everything so the browser/desktop/etc’ is just rubbish these days with mobility, HTML 5 and generally lots of other ways to get that work done.

There is one area that Java really needs to step up to the mark, that is around Analytics.  I remember when Hibernate became the Java defacto standard for database access.  Brilliant thing it was to.

Now however plain of data access is just one of the problems.  Languages like R, technologies like MadLib are beginning to help move way beyond database access and into complex analytics.  Real-time analytics is another area.  Almost all of these approaches rely on Java in some way but its hard to see how the current approach of JavaSE 8 is actually supporting this new generation of challenges.

Java has a real opportunity to leverage its massive install base to offer real new opportunities through the growth of analytics.

Only if its leadership can start leading.