If you are looking for some alternatives for Java, check out Scala. Companies like Twitter and LinkedIn are using Scala in their products and seems like the list is growing day by day.
Scala is both object oriented and functional language and the code compiles into bytecodes which runs on a Java Virtual Machine. The main advantage of writing Scala program is that you will end up writing lesser amount of code as Scala is more expressive than Java. The adoption of Scala is in early stage and i hope (should say, rather want) it replaces Java.
You can find more stuff on Scala from here.
Overview on Scala, might help you to embrace Scala - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqFryHC018k
Geeky Stuff - http://www.scala-lang.org/node/198
Scala Home - http://www.scala-lang.org/
Needless to say, i m so confused on whether i should blog about Java or Scala :-)
