JWZ's complains can broadly be broken into 2 categories: Java lacks advanced programming features, and Java doesn't perform well. Some of the features have bee

JWZ's complains can broadly be broken into 2 categories: Java lacks advanced programming features, and Java doesn't perform well. Some of the features have been added (enums, weak pointers, etc) and some will probably never be added because they conflict with the overall design of the language (typedefs, macros, etc). However, many-to-most of his performance complaints have become irrelevant due to a combination of better hardware (e.g. not needing to worry so much about small memory overheads) and a smarter VM (e.g. hotspot can inline entire branches of a call tree based on metrics it gathers at runtime). One of JWZ's main Java experiences was trying to program a web browser in Java 1.0, IIRC. Since this was over 10 years ago, his main frustrations seemed to be with the fact that he didn't have enough control over the language to get it to perform well enough for this purpose. Interestingly, most people I see choosing other languages over Java today don't care that Java performs better than their language of choice (it almost always does), but rather because their language of choice has convenient features which make it easier for them to write code, performance be damned. I came to Python from Java for this exact reason, and despite JWZ's valid frustration with 1990s Java performance, I can't help but read most of his essay and think "how quaint" at his performance concerns.