Is clojure (lisp in JVM) next big thing?
twopoint718: There is a video (http://clojure.blip.tv/) by the creator of Clojure which argues (quite convincingly) that it is really Java, the language, that some people may have problems with and that Java, the runtime environment, (JVM) is a great platform  in which to target your code.Lots of work is being done in areas such as JIT and adaptive optimization in the runtime environment. By targeting the JVM you get to take advantage of all that work put into optimization and thousands of libraries; it gets you a lot of leverage fast.