I think that more powerfull machines have made more easy to many people
get into the programming world, I'd like to forget machines are
procedural (easyly done in a some GHz big machine) but of course I
don't, I learned the old way Basic -> pascal -> C -> C++ -> ......
->java -> python ....
I think we should not care about the power of the machines needed for an
EDA system as it will always be lower than the power needed by a web
browser, or do you still pretend to browse in ascii ?
Things have changed in the last years, now you can embeed and
interpreter in you code (I do, I use jython http://www.jython.org/ in 2
softwares), a database, and many thing more, now you can make software
many order more complex than before, and that's thanks to better
languages.
Parts of one of my projects goes on a PIC microcotroller, programmed in
plain C and ASM, so I know what's been in both worlds and I can tell you
Java have many defects, can be more or less propietary, but it's a
concept by it's own, besides that, there a so many code wroten in Java
that makes very easy to learn the languaje and do a very good job, same
as with C or C++, but with 30% the effort.
Of course, at the end, everything is a matter of taste.
Hoping not be flamed this time,