[HowardRoark]

I am primarily a Java developer too, but I have very rarely seen any hobby projects being done in Java/Jsp. I wonder if there is a reason why you did it in Java? What framework do you use? Does Java needing a lot of memory have to do with the slowness of the site?

[metysj]

No I've used java because it was faster for me to code something functional. There's no other specific reason.

The slowness is due to the tons of non-minified javascript loaded, to the not-yet optimized number of requests to the back-end, and also to the fact that my VPS is not a competition server.

It's actually a miracle already that it renders the way it does. I understand only now how sensitive the HN community is to these aspects, I should have understood it already I guess ... hackers like clean efficient code, and it's all good feedback.