About speed, you may find many benchmarks showing Java faster than equivalent C applications. The recent Tomcat book by O’Reilly shows Tomcat suprassing Apache HTTPd. And this is to be expected, if you know the JIT technology pionereed by Java and now adopted by other modern languages.

About cross-platform, no other environment today offers the same easy cross-platform compatibility for real-world apps. But Perl and PHP developers, for example, still strugles to make apps that can run unchanged on Windows and Linux.

Java has the biggest ecosystem of tools and libraries for any programming language today. This is one of the many good reasons for any company choose Java today, for new projects. Another reason is that Java is the most widely used TODAY so it’s easier to find employers or contractors or consulting or learning resources. On popularity see:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
and
http://lang-index.sourceforge.net/

Naming .NET/Mono as a “better” alternative… How so? Is emulating a platform controlled by Microsoft, hoping they’ll never use their patents against you, really a better choice?

You may not like Java per se. You may not like the way Oracle is (not) working with the community, or the way Sun previously did not played nice with Linux users and developers. You may not like working on corporate, formal and bureucartic environmentos where Java is most likely to be used. But this is not enough to back biased claims in such a media like LinuxMag.

You can’t deny Java contribution to current state-of-art for IT. You can’t deny Java is a strong platform, with big market share, at least one good open source implementation, a sucesfull standardization process, and that it has many technical advantages over the competition, for example a simple threads API, powerfull I/O abstractions, and the most mature frameworks for many things like ORM (Hibernate) and clustering infrasctructure (JGroups). Java is the only real option for “general purpose” development since C and has been incredible sucessfull powering many of the biggest web sites and corporate applications in production today.

Did you know the biggest open source development organizations today, namely: Apache Software Foundation, Eclipse Software Foundation, and ObjectWeb use Java as the main developmento environent? Did you know the biggest open source software incubator, SourceForge, has Java for a large marging as the most used programming language by it’s hosted projects?

If you’re finding Java too finicky, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Also, you need to distinguish between the Java Platform and the Java Language.

The problem with benchmarks is that they are never about my application. Try writing a Nagios plugin-in, for example, in Java and an equivalent test in C (or even Perl or Bash) and see which runs faster. Java command line apps take 10 times as long to run, most of that is in the start up overhead. But then, I suppose Nagios is “doing it wrong” (dragonwisard) because it’s not written in Java.

“Java is the only real option for “general purpose” development since C…” … “while Java’s audience are (generally) highly educated engineers…”

First of all, check ANY ABET-accredited engineering programs and ANY university, and what are ALL of them required to teach? “C”, not Java, “C” … They may teach others, but the required of any engineer (an ENGINEER, not a programmer … there’s a difference … a legal one in some states) is “C”.

That said, my biggest personal gripe with Java is that it’s not “Unix”.

@xdigitalvampirex: “Pretty much the same reputation as Flash”
How is it the same as Flash? Are you lumping them together because both can be stuck on a web page?

I might have agreed with you back when Sun had a strangle-hold on the platform, but now we have the OpenJDK and a plethora of other mature alternatives to choose from (alternatives that actually work, unlike Gnash).

I feel like a lot of the criticism of Java (especially from developers and engineers) is very outdated FUD from the 1.4.2 days or even earlier. (Granted, I’ve also seen companies that are STILL using those older versions in production today. >.>)

This statement doesn’t seem supported by any facts that I am aware of. For example, Colorado State University’s ABET-accredited Computer Engineering Degree requires a year of Java, but no C (there is a semester of C++). My experience as a faculty member of an engineering school (Colorado School of Mines) is that Java is the preferred language around the world for learning computer science and engineering. Nowadays in the academic community C is typically considered a niche language.

@xdigitalvampirex: I (and ALL of my *nerd* colleagues) consciously avoid not only developing in Java, but using any Java based programs. I gather that either most people don’t care (ie general public), or just don’t like Java (Pretty much the same reputation as Flash).

It is not that don’t care, but it is too complex for most of general public. When you program with Java, it is more likely that you work on some distributed or web applications which is expensive in production and maintainance. Just figure that to run an Java based web app (i.e. base on Spring framework and developed for JBoss) you need to pay a monthly fee for a server. Those simple apps which are not used 24/7 can be build with php.
I’ve recently worked on medical service prototype app, and the only libraries which are available are in Java.

Java is a language and a platform. It is the most popular environment for mobile apps (J2ME), Android uses it (DARVIK), it is used by enterprise web apps / web services (those with huge developer teams).

The strongest advantages of java are utils. While working with Eclipse / Netbeans you only have to write algorythms, because compilator/ide finds errors, types mismatches etc. and even suggests how to fix it.

While the author may be unclear on the reasons why a company would choose Java it is undisputed that hundreds of thousands of companies use Java as the backbone of their enterprise architecture. We’re not talking small companies here.

With respect to cost, many companies are happy to pay for the servers based on their needs. Support is often the issue at hand. You choose what you are comfortable with as an organization. If you want open source you might not be able to get support, and that is a factor. Java, like .NET is heavily supported by companies like IBM and Oracle. Depends on what the target platform is.

In addition, Java has a huge array of tools for support, many of them free and open source. Debugging is a breeze and the language is simple, much simpler than C++ or other similar languages.

From what I see in this article the complexity is not inherent in Java but rather it sounds like an issue with the installation on the chosen OS. That is not a development issue.

Redhat supports it nicely as do most OS’s, windows and Unix based.

Clearly Java is not the language for everything but it is silly to make a grand sweeping statement devoid of context.

That aside, try the job boards and see for yourself the amount of Java out there. It’s huge.

Job trends concur, Java is on top for traditional languages:
http://java.dzone.com/articles/traditional-programming?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+javalobby%2Ffrontpage+%28Javalobby+%2F+Java+Zone%29

Indeed.com shows java as the most popular language:
http://www.soa-at-work.com/2010/02/it-job-trends-which-technologies-you.html

GWT and others are seeing great growth no doubt but lets not get carried away. I think there is plenty of room for Java out there.

Meanwhile a not so unknown company had the idea to give out to the world a new way to program dishwashers and kitchenrobots, Java…

Tenths of years are gone and Java is still waiting to drive the quantity of soap to wash your socks and underwear, or whatever else serious to do efficiently that can’t be done by the numerous other languages, scripts etc. around..

Sorry, I appreciate the effort in developing Java. I appreciate the entusiasm of its sustainers as well. Therefore I still can’t see a reason to use such thing in enterprise products/applications.
Or I should better say so far no serious programming tools/languages are developed Java may be a nice and interesting (programming) toy to play with in the meanwhile.

Seriously, there is very much work to do, and so much dump to trash from the programmer’s scene, before we can see a real efficient high level programming environment.

Let Java be considered as what it has been meant for. Let it run dish and clothes-washers. :-)