Choosing Java over Ruby/Python for your web-app really depends on what you want to sacrifice.
I counted LISP out because unless you're using Clojure, I know for sure you're not going to be able to beat anything else for web-app development. LISP for web-app probably works in the 90's for PG but we're in 2015 where libraries, frameworks, and tools for these other languages are just far too advanced and more productive than writing macros... sorry mate.
Anyway, back to Java over Ruby/Python.
Take a few examples:
At the Microservice area, Java seems to shine over other languages/platforms. JAX-RS feels more complete than Sinatra or whatever Django plugins that the Python community use. See a quick example of JAX-RS vs Sinatra somewhere in this blog post: (http://www.appneta.com/blog/microservice-service-oriented-ar...)
Maven can be huge and underwhelming (and ugly once in a while) but it's definitely more powerful than gems+bundler+rake and whatever Python adopts these days. Maven has been around for a while so most Java DEVs don't have to pick up tools as Python DEVs have to do quite often. But again, there are trade-offs: Maven XML is definitely uglier than Bundler or requirements.txt or package.json.
Let me ask one thing: in platform other than Java, do you use declarative transaction? My guess is "No". Which means you have to know when to open and close a transaction (and potentially join an existing one if the library isn't smart enough). Java Spring/EJB provides annotation based transaction.
I'm not suggesting that Java is better than other languages, but there are advantages of choosing Java.
Clojure is a LISP and from my experience I'm way faster with Clojure than with Java. Plus Clojure can use any java library. And by the way it seems that you have never used any lisp for web development. When you bump into the first problem with the bloatware made of 30.000 files and you have to debug it because there were no answers on stackoverflow...then you will find all out about the dark sides of "advanced frameworks".
This statement is false. If all else being equal the better tool you use the more productive you become. Take assembly for insance. You can know assembly arbitrarily well (and any assembly tools) you won't be faster with assembly than you are with java.
I counted LISP out because unless you're using Clojure, I know for sure you're not going to be able to beat anything else for web-app development. LISP for web-app probably works in the 90's for PG but we're in 2015 where libraries, frameworks, and tools for these other languages are just far too advanced and more productive than writing macros... sorry mate.
Anyway, back to Java over Ruby/Python.
Take a few examples:
At the Microservice area, Java seems to shine over other languages/platforms. JAX-RS feels more complete than Sinatra or whatever Django plugins that the Python community use. See a quick example of JAX-RS vs Sinatra somewhere in this blog post: (http://www.appneta.com/blog/microservice-service-oriented-ar...)
Maven can be huge and underwhelming (and ugly once in a while) but it's definitely more powerful than gems+bundler+rake and whatever Python adopts these days. Maven has been around for a while so most Java DEVs don't have to pick up tools as Python DEVs have to do quite often. But again, there are trade-offs: Maven XML is definitely uglier than Bundler or requirements.txt or package.json.
Let me ask one thing: in platform other than Java, do you use declarative transaction? My guess is "No". Which means you have to know when to open and close a transaction (and potentially join an existing one if the library isn't smart enough). Java Spring/EJB provides annotation based transaction.
I'm not suggesting that Java is better than other languages, but there are advantages of choosing Java.