Web Forefront

Lets start with the Java backslash first, the blogsphere is already brewing with numerous accounts on how the new Mac operating system has left Java standing cold. The most vocal entry I found was one published over at Java lobby: So Long Apple. The Party's Over, which narrates the experience of trying to use Java on this new Mac OS, and blasts Apple for their lack of support.

A more moderate outlook on Java not being supported on the Mac OS can be found over at Don’t get mad, get relevant , which goes onto say Java simply didn't make the cut, because as the title states, Java is not that relevant to the world of the Mac anymore, going on to cite a few remarks from Java's father James Gosling and the state of the Mac.

So does this mean developers using Mac's will be left with Objective-C as their only choice ? Upon closer inspection of the Mac OS Leopard overview , I managed to find this little tidbit in 'Picking Up the Pace of Cocoa Application Development' : To open up the benefits of the Cocoa frameworks to a wider developer audience, Leopard embraces two other highly dynamic languages for use in building Cocoa applications: Ruby and Python. These two languages are an excellent fit for integrating with the Cocoa frameworks, and they both have high quality bridges to Objective-C. These bridges allow you to mix and match Objective-C, Ruby, and Python, allowing you to choose the best tool for the job...

Niche as the Mac platform is generally thought to be, this is an extremely interesting turn of events for both Python and Ruby, since its fertile ground to acquire a new developer community and grow the adoption rates for both programming languages.