I'm working for a startup that uses a mix of PHP for serving web requests, and Java for backend processing. Our use of Java has definitely been successful. If

I'm working for a startup that uses a mix of PHP for serving web requests, and Java for backend processing. Our use of Java has definitely been successful. If your observation is based on reading HN, likely it's a bit skewed. Paul Graham has bashed Java and Java programmers quite a bit in his writings: "The programmers you'll be able to hire to work on a Java project won't be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python." That said, I would have to agree that Java is not the language of choice for small startups. There is a lot of overhead involved in setting up a Java project compared to other languages/platforms, and the problems that Java is best at solving aren't usually the problems you run into in a small web app (unless you're dealing with a lot of data). Java isn't as fun to use as newer languages, and doesn't have the vibrant community that Ruby and Python do (even if you include JVM based languages like Scala and Groovy). Java doesn't attract creative types. A web designer looking to pick up a first backend programming language is probably not going to choose Java, and thus they aren't going to create beautiful documentation repositories, fun open source projects, organize meetups, or create the next revolutionary social app. However, there is a reason that so many large startups start to lean on Java once they reach scale. Java is fast, encourages good design, and is great for large development teams.