I was expecting a more critical piece as well, but I'm not sure the words "speak out" gave me that impression as much as the fact that it was (a) a survey about

I was expecting a more critical piece as well, but I'm not sure the words "speak out" gave me that impression as much as the fact that it was (a) a survey about Java and (b) HN front page news. Java is not always a popular topic here. One could interpret some of the answers as a bit critical of Java (or the community), but not Java 8 specifically. The fact that 22% of Java devs are using a release that is 7 years old and hasn't been updated in a year isn't something the Java community is likely bragging about. I mentioned elsewhere in the thread that the takeaway for me was that 83% were excited about lambdas, which Scala already offers, and the notion that Java's future updates might start looking more like Scala. So the survey may suggest "why not just use Scala?"