Evolutionary Goo

I thought it would be interesting to see what the job scene looks like for the various JVM languages out there. The languages I chose to feature on my Indeed.com trend chart were Groovy, JRuby, Jython, Rhino, Scala and Clojure. The order in which I listed them is the order I figured they would be in, with Groovy being the highest and Clojure being the lowest. Based on the results below, I was correct on the highest and lowest. However, its the results in the middle that are the most interesting. Jython is neck and neck with Groovy for the top spot. JRuby is second to last and in decline. Scala looks to be on the rise. Can we trust these results as a barometer for the future of these languages on the JVM? Let me know what you think.

You can click on the image below to go to Indeed.com and see a larger version of the chart.

Just a cool picture of a volcanic eruption on one of Jupiter’s moons.

A lot of people are using compact fluorescent light bulbs these days, so I thought I would pass along this information. Each compact fluorescent light bulb contains a small amount of mercury. Mercury is poisonous to humans (and especially children) and should be disposed of in a proper way. Thus, old compact fluorescent bulbs should not be tossed into the trash and instead should be recycled. If a compact fluorescent bulb breaks in your home, make sure you clean it up properly. I can’t say what is the proper way to perform the clean up, but searching the Internet will provide you with several sets of instructions. This is one that I found from the EPA.

Update (April 21, 2009):
In the United States, you can recylce your compact fluorescent at any Home Depot store.
The Home Depot Launches National CFL Bulb Recycling Initiative

It was bound to happen sooner or later… all-female conception.

This weekend I ran across an interesting article about Google business policies in China. However, what I found interesting in the article had nothing to do about China. It was what Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, had to say about offsetting carbon emissions. It is well know that the Google co-founders fly in a private Boeing 767. Mr Brin is concerned about the impact his jet travel is having on the environment due to carbon emissions. He is taking care of this problem by “offsetting” his carbon emissions.

“What does offsetting his carbon emissions mean?”, you may ask. I had never heard of this concept, so I did a little research. One of the best references I found of course was on Wikipedia. They identify the subject as a “carbon offset”. The Wikipedia article gives pretty good information on carbon offsets and also lists some sources of criticisms in order to give a balanced view. In short a carbon offset is something you do to negate the carbon emissions that you personally create. One such thing is planting a tree. You can read the Wikipedia article for a more scientific definition.

To be fair to Mr. Brin, he is quoted in the article as “not really being sure about the efficacy of such programs”. The article reads as if Mr. Brin is going to release more information on what he is specifically doing at a later time. I’m not going to give my opinion on carbon offsets either. This isn’t a political blog and this subject definitely appears to be in the political arena. And I’m too new to this subject to have a valid opinion anyway. I simply find the entire subject fascinating and think that we will be hearing a lot more about this in the future. The subject is sure to have large political, social and scientific ramifications.