Luis de la Rosa is predicting the highlights of 2005, which includes plenty of Java goodies, such as Eclipse and Java 1.5 by default on OS X Tiger (that would be a nice move). But more importantly, Luis picks the rise of dynamic languages for spot number five:

5. Dynamic languages gain ground: Ruby and Groovy increase in usage, but no full-time jobs appear. Some amazing web apps appear on Ruby on Rails.

Luis made a safe bet predicting that “amazing web apps” will come barring the banner of Ruby on Rails: It happened on the 1st day of 2005! 43things.com launched and it is indeed an amazing web application that has the most lofty of goals: Push human ambition higher!

Luckily, Luis is already kinda wrong on “no full-time jobs appear, will be fully wrong half-way into the New Year, and even silly wrong by the end of December 2005. Companies around the world are already employing full-time Railers, like ”http://www.combustionlabs.com/“>Combustion Labs</a> (4 developers), ”http://www.robotcoop.com/“>The Robot Coop</a> (4 developers), ”http://www.collaboraid.biz/“>Collaboraid</a> (3 developers), ”http://www.basesys.com/“>Base Systems</a> (2 developers), ”http://www.37signals.com">37signals</a> (2 developers), and of course a legion of independent consultants and tech departments in tons of universities and big corporations (read more).

But I agree with Luis that big companies won’t be picking up Ruby on Rails for real before 2006. So that’ll leave the front runners and early adopters among small companies with a significant competitive advantage for the entirety of 2005. Congratulations, guys.