There are some insanities (patterns?) that most certainly are. The Java I have seen written by the people I know and the coding practices and rituals they aspir

There are some insanities (patterns?) that most certainly are. The Java I have seen written by the people I know and the coding practices and rituals they aspire to, make me feel uneasy. All the cool toys Java (and .net mind you) kids get to play with (IOC!, Factories!, Wrappers!, XML!, Objects above all!...) just feel like language band aids to me. And indeed I also have a feeling that premature optimization and general architectual astronaucy are deemed very highly by Java folks. Don't get me wrong - I think that JVM is a marvel. I could also find greater joy in writing COBOL for a living. (at least my coworkers wouldn't be rambling constantly about stuff that is wrong and don't matter).