Slashdot: Why is Java un-cool?

I would have responded directly on Slashdot to this article, but I was already moderating there. Is Java a little un-cool? Sure. So what.

I love doing server side Java. Is Java my favorite language? No. That would probably be Common Lisp. The thing is, for most of the work that I do, Java has several advantages:
  • Great free platform support for web presentation, SOAP, XML-RPC, asynchronous messaging (JMS), etc.
  • There are many skilled Java programmers: when I build a system for a customer, I can feel confident that maintenance will not be a problem.
Common Lisp has advantages also (extremely fast compiled code, small runtime overhead, rich standard library, very terse language) for some types of development (I use Lisp for working on algorithms, natural language processing, and other problems where I am breaking new ground - Lisp is great for experimental programming).

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