I chose Java for a few reasons: 1) It is very well established and widely distributed. 2) It is old enough to have been battle-hardened, but new enough to cont

I chose Java for a few reasons: 1) It is very well established and widely distributed. 2) It is old enough to have been battle-hardened, but new enough to contain some useful paradigms/features. It also has support for higher level languages like Clojure and Scala. 3) It is a good balance between performance and ease of use. 4) It has many libraries and resources. 5) While I am urging to give performance some slack, that does not mean to ignore it completely. Because Java is imperative, it gives programmers slightly better control of their algorithms. Most graphics programmers prefer to work low-level, at least in the core of their engine. Python and similar languages are often integrated into script engines, but rarely used for the core of an engine. I am suggesting Java because it allows programmers to work in at least a somewhat low-level style (the byte code is semi-predictable). 6) It is pretty easy to get started and learn (not necessarily easy to master though). I chose Clojure because it is Java-compatible, but Scala is probably just as good a choice.