He didn't delve much into the proliferation of JVM-based languages, which is significant, even if Java (the language) doesn't have the same 'excitement'.
What I expected to hear, but didn't in so many words:
The trend of people migrating to higher-level languages will continue. Of course, if performance is important, you'll move to C or C++ at the other pole. Read PG's "Beating the Averages".
Considering the growth of multi-core programming, there will be movement towards the high-level end of the spectrum (Lisp). The languages people will eventually end up at will be something JVM-based (so Clojure, or at least Scala), if Twitter's move from Ruby to JRuby to Scala is any indication of the failings of Python/Ruby to handle multi-threading.
Frameworks like Hadoop, and lightweight servers like Jetty, allow people to program for HPC and web servers in JVM-land while being OS-agnostic. Once the migration to high-level JVM languages takes shape, Java will be the new C -- a "high-level assembly" language.
He's saying exactly the opposite - he's saying that Java the language (not JVM - he never actually mentions the JVM at all) is on the rise. Java is very much not turning into a "high-level assembly" language and is not dead or dying.
I'm not sure how a language with garbage collection, lambdas now in Java8 and the kind of DI you get with Guice can possibly be considered anything but a high level language.
What I expected to hear, but didn't in so many words:
The trend of people migrating to higher-level languages will continue. Of course, if performance is important, you'll move to C or C++ at the other pole. Read PG's "Beating the Averages".
Considering the growth of multi-core programming, there will be movement towards the high-level end of the spectrum (Lisp). The languages people will eventually end up at will be something JVM-based (so Clojure, or at least Scala), if Twitter's move from Ruby to JRuby to Scala is any indication of the failings of Python/Ruby to handle multi-threading.
Frameworks like Hadoop, and lightweight servers like Jetty, allow people to program for HPC and web servers in JVM-land while being OS-agnostic. Once the migration to high-level JVM languages takes shape, Java will be the new C -- a "high-level assembly" language.