There have been plenty of fruitful discussions about Java on this site

I searched and didn't find any. Could you please point me to them? Note, I'm looking for posts that specifically address perceived problems people have with Java. Thanks.

The only issue Java is suffering from are maybe performance, flaky implementation accross the board, and lack of shrinkwrap products (or so some perlmonger things) .

Seeing as the complaints I was referring to are coming from Perl people, performance and lack of shrinkwrap products are probably of limited concern to them. They are valid when comparing to C/C++ and others though, so thanks for mentioning it. As for flaky implmentation, that isn't really the language specification, but does affect overall impression and, as such, is again a valid point.

why do you throw out disclaimers? huh Anynymous Coward?

Obviously you have a problem with the tone of my post. It was written rather hastily and I didn't carefully analyze how every sentence contributed to the overall impression. My apologies for this, but please try and stick to discussing the main points I brought up if at allpossible, thanks.

As for the disclaimers, I was trying to avoid projecting a bias as to which language I think is better and trying to get others to set aside their biases. I commonly use Perl, Java, Ruby, Python, C, and C++ interchangeably, and enjoy programming in all of them. What I'm trying to do here is get a feel for people's major complaints about Java, as I see a lot of complaints about it on this site.

Thank you, and sorry for any misunderstanding :)