[nostromo]

I've written two crawlers in Java and found it quite well-suited.

I think most people on HN who hate Java are talking about creating websites, and for good reason. Back in the bad ol' days, people would use Java frameworks like Struts for web apps, and it was quite painful.

For my latest project I'm using Play Framework for front-end Java, and it's quite delightful.

[boyter]

Agreed. I am in the process of porting a site from PHP to Play and I am loving it.

I am a fan of lots of languages, but recently for anything I am supporting for a long period of time I want static typing to catch massive re-factoring issues. Id rather use C# then Java personally, but Play is an amazing Java framework to use.

[harman]

Play framework is definitely a good Java framework to use. In my current projects I am finding it very useful.