> I don't know anyone who would say the majority of Java applications aren't huge, slow, memory-hogging beasts This is really a matter of perspective. A typica

> I don't know anyone who would say the majority of Java applications aren't huge, slow, memory-hogging beasts This is really a matter of perspective. A typical enterprise application is running on a beafy multicore processor and spending most of its threads' cycles waiting for database IO. Also, it's not really a concern if your jar file is 100 MB when your machine has 256 GB of ram. From this perspective, the fact that an application can be quickly slapped together from the multitude of Java libraries and frameworks by a stackoverflow savvy junior developer far far outweighs the marginal performance benefits that could be gained from using a language that compiles to native code. The fact is that Hotspot has made the jvm perform "good enough" for this kind of domain. And keep in mind that many enterprise developers (at least in my experience) have never used a language besides Java, so this level of performance is normal to them.