Java (does|doesn't) suck

I use Java programs all the time: jEdit, Eclipse and ArgoUML just to name a few. As a programmer, Java has served me well for over a decade, and I've never once wrote a piece of Java code of which the performance was unacceptable.

However, I keep hearing other user complain and snicker about the performance of Java. Though I try to defend the performance of one of my favourite programming language, I continue to hear the same chant again and again.

Once and for all, let me say: Java is not slow. If you don't believe me, come to my Java Performance Tuning course. I'll be happy to write equivalent Java and C code and time the execution of both.

An article on Phoronix.com brought to light something that I never expected. It would seem that Java on Windows Vista actually runs slower that Java on Ubuntu. I have to admit that this was a great surprise for me! I always assumed that Windows being the larger market for Java it would be optimize for the platform. However, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Maybe that's why there are still a lot of folks out there who are disillusioned by the performance of Java.

From prior experience, I suspect that Java application take up much less memory on Linux than Windows, but I haven't investigate that yet.