There has to be some reason that a language that benchmarks like Java is used to build so many heavy-feeling bloated programs that eat way more memory than seem

There has to be some reason that a language that benchmarks like Java is used to build so many heavy-feeling bloated programs that eat way more memory than seems reasonable, even from big "tech first" companies. Either lots of highly-experienced Java programmers aren't using patterns suited to good performance, or the language actually sucks a lot more than benchmarks/theory indicate. I suspect it's mostly the former. It's been this way ever since I can recall. "Java's so fast you probably can't tell the difference most of the time". Well, OK, but, I can. So something's going on here.