Java has more than matured over the last 14 years. Perhaps it has even grown a little long in the tooth. As the JVM has become open, new alterative langauges supporting much of the Java feature set have risen in the open source world. Some even seek to surpass Java in features with alterative libraries and code styles.

We'll take a quick look at the state of Java now, some recent features, then contrast these to the new open source JVM dialects such as Clojure, Scala, and Groovy.

Old and new Java programmers can learn from this tour of whats going on in the Open Java world.