The opposite is true for me too.
I've had an Enterprise Java guy telling me once that "programming and Object Orientation got lost with those simpler, easy-to-use language and frameworks", referring to Ruby and Rails.
I dunno about that. Alan Kay would probably say that it got lost with C++ and Java, but YMMV.
Also, one word: speed.
But... I don't really think it boils down to this, it's not like one is better than the other. Proof is that both communities are learning from each other, and there's also JRuby... it's a great thing.
JRuby is actually for projects that have a lot of existing java code. If you're programming ruby and all your existing code is in ruby... it's not necessarily a win, unless you happen to need a particular Java library for performance reasons.
> I've had an Enterprise Java guy telling me once that "programming and Object Orientation got lost with those simpler, easy-to-use language and frameworks", referring to Ruby and Rails.
You did tell him Ruby is roughly as old as Java, Python is older and Smalltalk predates Java by almost 15 years right?
The comment doesn't seem to involve when the languages and frameworks were respectively created, though if you do look at the pairings (Ruby w/ Rails, Python w/ Django as large examples), they are relatively new after all.
They often make remarks about how Rails is easy and Java programming is where real men make their mark.
I think this comes down to a need for people to feel proud about the tools they use and the things they make.