This sounds like a memory leak (probably sticking items in a hashmap and never bothering to remove them), or nothing has forced a major GC. Java apps that grow

This sounds like a memory leak (probably sticking items in a hashmap and never bothering to remove them), or nothing has forced a major GC. Java apps that grow in memory usage without bound aren't demonstrating problems with Java - they're demonstrating poor programming. JIT'ing and GC algorithm improvements over the past few years have invalidated a lot of the original complaints raised against Java.