Well the title got me when I decided to purchase this book “Beyond Java – A glimpse at the Future of Programming Languages”, however perhaps it should have been titled “Why to move from Java to Ruby” as the book for a good portion is an explanation of how Ruby solves the problems that Java has and the direction Java is moving. While the book did describe where Java was, and the future limits and what to look at Beyond Java, the high use of Ruby to describe these overwhelmed the book. In fact, only the last chapter of 20 pages gave an comparison of “Contenders” as the chapter title described other then scant descriptions

Initially I lost count of the number of times information regarding C++ was repeated in the book, and how Java got it’s great penetration from the C++ community. I almost put the book down after the first few chapters, it was highly repetitive.

However, given my increasing interest in Ruby I was able to work though this. I could see a Java developer that has already discard Ruby as a fad to put this book down. In fact, as a Ruby reference it provided some good tips, again strengthening my comment of including Ruby in the title.

Overall an interesting read, however for a small book it could have offered a lot more.

On the same topic, some interesting points in the article The Problems With Java.