@Reinier: Excellent, glad to have some pushback :-) Note, however, that I did not (in this particular opinion piece, anyway) actually claim that Java is universally “bad”, merely that it’s not a particularly powerful tool for a problem this complex.

To use an analogy, a kitchen knife is not inherently a “bad” tool just because a surgical scalpel happens to be a more advanced instrument. If you’re going into brain surgery, I’m sure you’d prefer the use of the scalpel, but on the other hand, the kitchen knife would do just fine for cutting bread. (Well, I actually compared Java to something like a flint knife, but you get the point…)

In addition, the quoted article itself has little to do with my opinion that Java isn’t up to the task (though a figure of 750KLOC for “infrastructure” code does tend to support that position). Perhaps I’ll elaborate my take on Java’s specific deficiencies at some future time, albeit plenty of people have already previously done so and I’m not sure how much new I could possibly add. I think I’ll rather focus on writing about the specific unique advantages of Lisp, and folk can then always do a diff with some other language to get a feel of that language’s evolutionary status.

Now, in this particular case I didn’t get into any further analysis since I think the excerpted article pretty much speaks for itself, and not just from a technical viewpoint. So, possibly you have too high expectations for a mere rant ;-)