Java not that bad...

Java not that bad...

Those syntax checks would be useful if Java would have templates. But it doesn't have (currently)

You have generic coming with Java 5.0 (aka 1.5).

so you have to cast a lot and even though there are static type checks you still end up with lots of ClassCastExceptions during runtime - not much of an improvement over Python or Perl.

You can dynamically check the type of your class before casting (instanceof).

Those problems are developer errors anyway, and you can always use wrapper objects to enforce use of certain types if you need.

I hardly have ClassCastExceptions during development, because I make sure to adapt my coding to the limitations of the language.

Really? It takes ages to start the Java VM and it starts with occupying 60MB of RAM - and the program hasn't done anything yet.

It depends of the program and its uses. On my machine i start tomcat in less than 5 seconds. I don't consider that to be a problem. Especially as I don't start it often.

I don't mean to preach Java. There are things I don't like with it. It's far from perfect. It's history has been strange: targeted to program appliances (e.g. washing machines, ...) then born on the web (applets), made a (unsuccesful) approach with desktop programs, with now a focus on server side. It's "Learn once, Fit everywhere" is too monopolistic, and it's lack of support with external techno is s*cking big time (COM integration anyone?), and deployment problems (ClassLoader issues) are a pain.

But it's a nice tool, and it solves some problems very well...