[rockyj]

Java is good, make no mistakes about it. It offers you find grained control in almost every aspect of programming (e.g. concurrency). However it is the same freedom that allows developers to make mistakes. For example -

One can write concurrent systems in Java without understanding concurrency. Languages like Scala and Clojure will give you some freedom but will also enforce certain design principles which will save you.

Similarly for web development, there are scores of frameworks in the Java world, and you can mess it up easily. Rails / Django on the other hand will provide one good, solid way to do web programming.

Finally, Java is showing it's age. The need to write large files of XML to configure things and the lack of ability to treat functions as objects put developers off. Some things are being addressed by Oracle but will take time.