If you’ve been bummed out by all the negative stuff I’ve been saying about Java and its future lately, here’s one bit of news that might cheer you up just a smidge: Java is still the number one most popular programming language, according to the most recent TIOBE survey. The language was #1 at the last survey and remains atop the heap this time around, above Visual Basic and all your major C dialects — though Objective-C made a heady jump from 45th place to 9th, no doubt entirely on the strength of developers grabbing for a piece of that iOS pie. And, speaking of smartphones, DZone speculates that much of Java’s continued strength comes from the surging popularity of Android, which, as I’ve discussed here at length, isn’t an unalloyed good for the Java platform, considering that Android isn’t officially Java.But maybe I’m being too paranoid there too! InfoWorld’s Paul Krill has a longish opinion piece basically saying that, really, those of us who fear that Oracle’s lack of attention to Java will hurt the platform worry too much. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely reassured, as the main evidence he cites is that products/projects like the Spring Framework, JBoss, Eclipse (mostly backed by IBM), and Hadoop (from Yahoo) exist. Exist they do, but the ability of other companies to fill in the gaps depends on the degree to which Oracle is willing to loosen its grip on the platform — particularly in regards to the TCK crisis — and that doesn’t seem to be in the immediate future. Software Development