The one area where Java feels fat is the memory usage overhead due to 64-bit pointers being used a lot. So if you end up holding and processing a lot of data in

The one area where Java feels fat is the memory usage overhead due to 64-bit pointers being used a lot. So if you end up holding and processing a lot of data in RAM, the process allocation and the garbage collector metrics won't look awesome. That said, recently Openj9 improves on this literally by miles. I agree with all the other points - Java and its tooling are very powerful and by that nature they are enabling us to put that much more load on it, so yes, that's where it will be predominantly visible. Edit: that said, Java was created when we didn't have containers. (Just as Clojure was created before Java had lambdas and aggregate streams). So it may be the time to come back closer to the metal again, but as you point out, we need to maintain a clear mind while contemplating that.