The language has some very poor design decisions baked into it (read: no functions) but the biggest problem with Java is that it's the lowest common denominator enterprise programming language, and managers have used it to lower the bar in their attempt to commoditize programmers. As a result there are lots of Java programmers on the market, with low salary expectations, and the code they produce is of commensurately low quality. As Paul Graham put it, Java is a language you learn to get a job. Do you want all your company's code to be written in a language that your programmers only learned because they needed a job?