Yes, as somebody paying the bills mostly through Java, I can affirm that Java is the new COBOL.
While compensating for the excess of C++, too many good ideas went out the window, and we're left with something that extends COBOL by letting our copybooks, er, beans, have multiple instances, and letting out procedures, er, methods, have parameters, local variables and explicit return values.
There's a few other things Java does a bit better than COBOL, but it's used just like "COBOL with separate compilation" in standard "enterprise" practice.
Class invariant?
Closures?
Immutability?
Fuggedaboudit.
On the bright side, other languages are starting to highjack the JVM.
While compensating for the excess of C++, too many good ideas went out the window, and we're left with something that extends COBOL by letting our copybooks, er, beans, have multiple instances, and letting out procedures, er, methods, have parameters, local variables and explicit return values.
There's a few other things Java does a bit better than COBOL, but it's used just like "COBOL with separate compilation" in standard "enterprise" practice.
Class invariant?
Closures?
Immutability?
Fuggedaboudit.
On the bright side, other languages are starting to highjack the JVM.