It seems clear that SFDC has never really stepped up to the plate and taken ownership of the toolkits. They treated AJAX pretty shabbily given a year plus long beta cycle, and then a production version that now seems obsolete given VF.

PHP has always been Nicks sort of pet project, Ruby never really got strong, Java is still back on Axis 1.2 last I looked, etc.

I think the hope was always that the user community would take over and they could retreat to the SOAP api as their one interface.

So, I don't know what's coming at Dreamforce in a few weeks, however I'd be really surprised if that direction changed in any big way. I was surprised that Nick is releasing an update, let's hope they pick some languages and commit to staying up to date with them.

Meanwhile, nice forums! Thanks, Steve.