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Java is moving into archaic irrelevance faster than ever. That is, the language itself.

The JVM, however, is now more useful and relevant than it ever was. It used to be naught but an implementation detail. Now, rather, it's central to an entire ecosystem of languages that will inevitably send Java the way of C: used only when the greatest speed is necessary.

Scala is basically a next-generation Java. Java with functional programming, or really, vice versa. JRuby make Ruby actually scalable, given the presence of native threads and interoperability with existing enterprise libraries that commonly only ship in the form of Java or C# libraries. Clojure enables LISPers of yore and Schemers of new import explore functional programming as it used to be, without having to drop the wealth of Java libraries available. Ceylon, Groovy, Jython, and dozen of others are paving a way to give the JVM much more to do after Java becomes obsolete.

Java will never die - it'll just become like COBOL, Fortran, and C before it: used in enterprise software, operating systems, and outdated educational assessments.

- Perl 5 and earlier: An interpreter written in C.

Not exactly. The interpreter compiles the source files into a bytecode and executes it on a stack-based virtual machine: ahref=http://perlbin.sourceforge.net/perlcompiler/perl.internals.pdfrel=url2html-14852http://perlbin.sourceforge.net...>

- Python: An interpreter written in C.

A virtual machine in C: http://www.troeger.eu/files/teaching/pythonvm08.pdf

- Ruby: An interpreter written in C.

A virtual machine in C: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YARV

Or in C++: http://rubini.us/

Or against the JVM (which is written in C++): http://jruby.org/

- Lua: An interpreter written in C.

A virtual machine in C: http://www.lua.org/doc/jucs05.pdf

- Tcl: An interpreter written in C.

A virtual machine in C: https://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2002/archive/Tcl2002papers/kenny-bytecode/paperKBK.html

- PHP: An interpreter written in C.

Hey, you got one. However the they are currently revising the language to make it compatible with adding a JIT later: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248637/PHP_keepers_plot_radical_revision_of_the_language

And Facebook has their own C++ VM: http://hhvm.com/

- UNIX shells: Interpreters written in C.

Different problem space.

There is JRuby ;)

Actually, JRuby is quite awesome, they really put a lot of thought in seamless interaction with Java code (e.g. converting between the different naming conventions).

why don't they use jruby
http://www.jruby.org/
or jython ?
http://www.jython.org/
inventing yet another languge when there so many to choose from doesn't seems to be too smart
i can give only one failure go language that is now falling from top 10 if you watch tiobe
http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
also another failure is Groovy used with grails:
"Other interesting moves in the TIOBE index this month can be found outside the top 20. This is due to the fact that the index uses 7 different search engines as of this month. Some promising languages lost many positions. Most striking examples of this are NXT-G (down from 19 to 54) and Groovy (from 25 to 65)."

However, in the meantime Java is still the most widely used language:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

Java is also about the JVM - which is increasingly useful for other languages such as Scala, Python, and Ruby. Have a read about why the JRuby guys like the JVM:

http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2009/j-is-for-jvm-why-the-j-in-jruby/

Java and the JVM are going to be around for a long while yet.

For a Python/Ruby style scripting language there's Groovy.

You can use Python or Ruby themselves with Jython or JRuby, respectively.

So I'm going to trot out a different perspective; enough others will thrash through the personalities under discussion here. In my view, Mono is essentially irrelevant. Some folks will use it to bridge apps around platforms, instead of Qt or a handful of other approaches. Yawn. Internally, Microsoft has done some pretty neat things with their various implementations of the CLR (the VM underlying C#). This is unsurprising, as they're well capable of hiring some pretty bright folks. But I doubt that any of that will ever really inform the broader computing community.

In contrast, the JVM seems to be undergoing a renaissance. There's tons of programming language work on the JVM these days: Scala, JRuby, Clojure, Jython, etc. Each of these are bringing their own communities and problem domains to the JVM, and have already broken new ground in language implementation and design. As for new frameworks, there's scalable computing work going on under the Hadoop project (Google filesystem, Bigtable, and map-reduce for-the-rest-of-us) and the really interesting related framework Cascading. With the JVM as an interoperability platform, these languages and various new frameworks all get to be combined together in fascinating new ways.

(Plus, with projects like Scala and Clojure it's looking increasingly like the JVM isn't going anywhere any time soon, regardless of Java's fate)

...and especially JRuby! www.jruby.org

Though Java-centric in nature, the JVM provides a secure sandboxed environment to host numerous languages including Ruby, Python, Lisp and even JavaScript. Throw in Groovy and Scala for home-grown alternatives.

Thanks to the efforts of IcedTea (principally funded by RedHat) and others, Java 6 will be fully GPL by the end of the year.

Sun has new language for client-side scripts.. Just-so-coincidentally, Sun has had a variation of this new "language" available in your browser for a decade! It's called applets and the JRE.

Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Groovy. Whatever. Sun has a Java runtime in the browser, a sandboxed one that can only access the DOM and browser. But you still get all the Java benefits, like multithreading and bytecode compilation. And all the Java benefits, like it's implemented for IE AND Firefox on Mac, Windows, Linux and Solaris. Further, it is available under the GPL, so you can port it to any other platform.

See this web page for details of Sun's leaner faster in-browser JVM.

It can host a variety of scripting languages such as Python, Ruby and, surprise, even JavaScript, as well as a couple home-grown languages such as Groovy and the purpose built JavaFX Script

Now before you shriek in horror at the thought of a JVM running in a web browser, Sun have made a renewed commitment to the browser via the soon to be released Consumer JRE, which aims to relieve some of the bloat and provide an improved experience.

Still no official 64 bit browser plugin but the IcedTea folks are working on a substitute.