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(Via Slashdot.)

Jonathan Schwartz: Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz, speaking at the SugarCRM Customer and Developer Conference earlier this month, made a pronouncement that went largely unnoticed by industry pundits. "I think what you'll see from Sun," Schwartz remarked, "is that we're just going to take the 'J' off the 'JVM' and just make it a 'VM'."

This is the first time I've seen this quote. Slashdot used the quote in the context of Sun's hiring of the lead Jython developer. Although I cheered the news for Python and Jython's sake, I'm not sure how to react to this quote and a Java developer.

I guess I should accept it as something inevitable. The JVM is a pretty good runtime engine, and it seems a waste to keep it all to Java itself.

But the argument can also go the other way around. Java is a decent language, and it seems a waste to target it only to the JVM. I've seen three very public attempts at targeting Java to other platforms:

• The GNU gcj project, which added a Java front end to the GCC compiler collection, so that we can target Java programs directly for the x86 platform.
• Google's Android project, which targets Java program for the register-based vertual machine called Dalvik
• The IKVM project, which targets Java programs for the .NET runtime

I think as main stream scripting languages crowds into the JVM, Java the language needs to do the opposite—spreading out to other runtimes.

I think in the long term, Java should not be expected to be the most performant language on the JVM, as it is today, for Java used to be an strictly interpreted and slow language just like the other scripting languages. As Java's performance was boosted over the years, so will the other scripting languages.

Java the language needs to seek new living spaces, new runtimes, and new places where it will shine.

That, or, in five years we'll all need to learn a new language. (In case you haven't figured it out, Java the language is no longer strategic to Sun.)