[yesimahuman]

Well, then I disagree that after two years of really using Python for everything, that I've been much more productive than with Java. I bet I spent a good chunk of that time debugging errors at run time which would have been caught at compile time with Java.

Of course that is a non-scientific anecdote and there are times that the REPL is just awesome (especially for web app development).

[matrix]

This has been my experience too. Currently I like Python for quickly banging out web apps, and Java for building the back end stuff.

Sure, Java has some baggage, but it has a lot of benefits too, such as much better tools for deployment, performance profiling, libraries galore, the JVM, and more. I find it's often the best tool for the job when there's heavy lifting to be done.