I think he's confusing obsolete with mature. Java is far from the hot new thing, but it you want to do large scale stuff then you know it can do the job. And there is plenty of innovation happening in frameworks like Spring rather than the core language. It's once massive share of the job market is definitely dropping, but the jobs that remain are also some of the highest paid.
I would be very surprised if Java didn't endure as long as COBOL. Certainly Java people are going to be able to find jobs easily for at least the next decade.
I was thinking the other day, sometime next year I'm going to be able to legitimately claim 15 years professional Java experience. Damn, I'm old.
A language is not obsolete until not enough people know it anymore and companies are forced to convert their code to the "hot new thing" or some mature-but-not-yet-obsolete language.
Maybe obsolete isn't the word, but the language is showing it's age and heritage. I've worked with Java almost since it's inception and since I've started looking at Ruby and RoR, Java just seems cumbersome to work with and it takes so much code to get anything done!
obsolete? no, and it will probably take a serious hardware revolution before it happens. cobol is not obsolete. cobol would become obsolete before java.
