I'm a CS student at the University of Edinburgh.<p>I have to use a lot of Java, C, Python and sometimes even Haskell. I have to use PHP at work.<p>I would love to spend more time learning ruby and rails. I just find my time would be better spent increasing my skills with tools I actually need to use daily as i'd only use RoR for my side project web apps.<p>Do you think the play! framework for java is a good alternative to rails or will it never become as popular?<p>http://www.playframework.org
I would second the 'Grails' comment. Groovy has similar expressiveness to Ruby's, but retains much Java-ness needed for Java people to make the leap. You can use quite a bit of Java knowledge and experience in Grails, while gaining a lot of productivity.
Part of what makes Rails so popular is Ruby itself, and this is not by accident. Although Play! may implement many of the features of Rails, the expressiveness of Ruby is what makes Rails tick.<p>Just my 2 cents.
Grails and JRuby on Rails are already Rails for Java, and there are a ton of existing frameworks out there in Java for anything you can think of almost, so no, I doubt it.