<p>Although the 18-year-old Java platform isn't the darling of young developers anymore, don't count it out, an analyst stressed this week at the Jax Conf Java conference in Santa Clara, Calif., noting that Java still has some formidable support.</p><p>In a presentation about the rise, fall, and rise again of Java, analyst Stephen O'Grady, of RedMonk, cited Java's meteoric rise to the top of the heap of popular programming languages after it debuted in 1995. But in recent years, the platform has been beset by a number of factors: Young programmers being less likely to use the Java platform or language, the rise of rivals like JavaScript, and concerns about Oracle's stewardship. Oracle took over that role when it acquired Java founder Sun Microsystems in 2010.</p><p>Oracle has not done Java any favors with its lawsuit against Google over the Java-based Android platform (which Oracle lost) and Oracle's dispute with Apache over Java, as well as Oracle's disputes with other open source communities, O'Grady stressed. "You can combine all these things, and any one of them in and of itself isn't a big deal, but they become a bigger deal in the context of language fragmentation," O'Grady said.</p><p>Businesses today are no longer using just Java and something from Microsoft, O'Grady said: "You go around to any enterprise, they're likely to be using any one of a dozen languages." Java as a language faces far more competition than it did 10 years ago, even if some of the languages, such as Groovy and Scala, are based on the Java Virtual Machine.</p><p><a href="http://www.infoworld.com/t/java-programming/java-out-of-the-spotlight-still-spry-220129">Keep reading...</a></p>