I don't think that's true. - Python - Ruby - Ruby on Rails - Django - Coffeescript - Node.js Were all results of people challenging the status quo of language

I don't think that's true. - Python - Ruby - Ruby on Rails - Django - Coffeescript - Node.js Were all results of people challenging the status quo of language/platform capability. Developing new languages/frameworks/platforms is NOT unproductive, and has proved very successful in the past. While java may not be a good excuse to avoid android, it's certainly a good excuse to improve upon the stack (as another commenter suggested, strapping Scala to it would probably be a huge productivity win). Alas the OP took a pragmatic approach and just built the product. That's fine, but it isn't "better" than someone who (rightly) thinks java is junk and attempts to improve it.