I would say its suitable, but I wouldn't say it's a good general purpose language for a variety of reasons. The first being that "good" is totally subjective. I

I would say its suitable, but I wouldn't say it's a good general purpose language for a variety of reasons. The first being that "good" is totally subjective. It feels like it has lagged behind its competitors both in terms of language features and API design. Its generally crappy for GUI apps. It doesn't really excel at anything in particular unless you're already invested in it. Even it's original premise of "write once run anywhere" is mostly irrelevant now, and there doesnt seem to be a future for client side Java apps outside of Android. Overall I'd prefer to use just about anything else in pretty much any domain where Java would be a consideration. It may not be an inherent problem with the language itself, but its ecosystem in my experience leaves it as one of the worst general purpose languages in terms of productivity while not offering a sufficient advantage to make up for that. All that being said, Java is still good enough most of the time.