Are you insecure about your new found favorite language that you have to bash the old one that you didn't have much success with to justify your new choice? If you are really happy with your new favorite language, great. Do good work with it and move on. No need to keep smearing the old one.
Heh, no. Your comment didn't seem rhetorical so I was just providing an explanation for the phenomenon you've observed. However, we do engage in much spirited discussion throughout the software world about the relative merits of various languages and their features. There's no getting away from it, and Java's gonna get beat on until the end of time. Hope you don't take it personally.
None taken. If those frequent "spirited discussion" soothed your ego, by all means increase the weekly Java bashing. Meanwhile we just keep making software with it.
It's not about ego, it's about taste. Specifically the tastes of the majority of HN.
Sure, lots of software gets written in Java. And (less so) Cobol and Fortran. Every sensitive Java (and PHP, etc) user who is on HN and feels compelled to respond to every slight has to understand, though:
HN was founded by the guy who wrote Beating the Averages[0].
We're in PG's house. And he never liked Java.
So if Java fans come here with a chip on their shoulder about it and constantly take the bait and get into flamewars about how solid and adequate their language is, they should remember what forum they're in. Not that opinions in the forum can't be changed, but why bother when there's plenty of Java love out there elsewhere?
And all throughout the land, the name "Viaweb" is on everyone's lips, synonymous with e-commerce, rather than the Blub technology also-rans at Amazon and eBay.
So it's basically herd mentality with reinforced in-group cliche. Just because PG started HN, we all have to toe the party line to bash Java? If you think PG cared about everyone here has to agree and follow his opinion, you paint him a very shallow man.
And I think he's naive in that blog in using single language as a criteria to evaluate developers, but there's another story.