Unfortunately while the language matters, the ecosystem matters even more.
It isn't enough that Java is fast -- if all the libraries you're using are slow. And if the libraries you're using are slow, maybe you're measuring the wrong thing ;)
My biggest gripe with Java is that it is basically useless for anything other than big-scale web applications. And for those kinds of apps, many companies still go for C++.
I mean really, for scripting the startup time makes you want to puke. For desktop apps, I've never seen a Java application that I liked because the GUI toolkits available are brain-dead, and because Java apps have this nasty habit of freezing the interface in response to user events. Also, all Java apps are freakishly huge in regards to memory usage. I've seen Python apps that are tolerable, but nerver Java. Eclipse, the golden example, makes me want to hurt myself.
For small web apps you can get decent performance out of Python/Ruby/PHP on a 512MB VPS -- 200 reqs/sec at least is really not a problem. If you need more than that, it means you're successful, so why not throw money at it?
What else? Android is using its own VM that's not-Java. This means you cannot use libraries that do bytecode manipulation, and is essentially what http://www.ikvm.net/ is doing on top of .NET or Mono.
So in what cases does Java really bring value?
Don't get me wrong; I would love to see Mono being popular for web apps for instance -- it's a kick-ass open-source VM, with performance mostly on par with Java, but using less resources and being a better citizen on Unix (kind of ironic if you think about the roots of Java).
It isn't enough that Java is fast -- if all the libraries you're using are slow. And if the libraries you're using are slow, maybe you're measuring the wrong thing ;)
My biggest gripe with Java is that it is basically useless for anything other than big-scale web applications. And for those kinds of apps, many companies still go for C++.
I mean really, for scripting the startup time makes you want to puke. For desktop apps, I've never seen a Java application that I liked because the GUI toolkits available are brain-dead, and because Java apps have this nasty habit of freezing the interface in response to user events. Also, all Java apps are freakishly huge in regards to memory usage. I've seen Python apps that are tolerable, but nerver Java. Eclipse, the golden example, makes me want to hurt myself.
For small web apps you can get decent performance out of Python/Ruby/PHP on a 512MB VPS -- 200 reqs/sec at least is really not a problem. If you need more than that, it means you're successful, so why not throw money at it?
What else? Android is using its own VM that's not-Java. This means you cannot use libraries that do bytecode manipulation, and is essentially what http://www.ikvm.net/ is doing on top of .NET or Mono.
So in what cases does Java really bring value?
Don't get me wrong; I would love to see Mono being popular for web apps for instance -- it's a kick-ass open-source VM, with performance mostly on par with Java, but using less resources and being a better citizen on Unix (kind of ironic if you think about the roots of Java).