Who else has this quandary?

I'm long, long weary of Java and C++ (which I thought I had been weary of over well over a dozen years ago, but here I am again struggling with it). Where next? Sure, I've been looking at Ruby for over five years now, and Rails a bit as well, but I've not had an opportunity to put it to any real use in a production environment (except for an odd pairing session here and there).

Recently I've also looked at D, Erlang, and Scala. "Looked at" means that I've downloaded it, gotten it running, run through at least a tutorial or two, maybe read the book, and then moved on to experimentation, perhaps starting to re-implement pieces of systems.

Seems like the most interesting stuff happening is going on in Ruby--it's a rapidly maturing environment. There are things going on around the other three languages I mentioned, but it doesn't to be nearly as much. Maybe when they've reached "critical mass," there will be more going on around them.

In any case, there are scads of new languages and tools vying for attention. It seems like there are more than ever, making for an exciting time. It also means that my stack of what I don't know keeps piling up. I think I need to pick one and invest some real, significant effort into it.

So, the decision: ride on the bandwagon, or blaze a trail? What are your reasons for putting your money where it currently is? What else should I be looking at that I'm not?

posted by Jeff L.  # 3/02/2008 03:14:00 PM Database TDD Blogs