A recent forum post about diagnosing Java virtual machine problems stated this:

No, it is NOT wrong to give up on the java package and write your own software.

In fact, this has already been done. Search for Enrique's fine "skienforge" software. Written in python, it does almost everything the host software does. More in several cases. And all without the JVM headaches. [...]

This put me in an "I agree with you" rant mood...but I didn't feel it appropriate to vomit all over the forum. :

As an aside: When in college we first learned to program using java...because it didn't matter what platform you were on, you could learn to program. Java was the big deal back then and we all complained when Apple didn't release the new JVM for nine months.

Now I understand what was taking Apple so long: Apple's philosophy is that, whenever possible, their users computers do exactly what,how,and when they expect it to -- Jeff Raskin's ideology (the 'father' of Human-Computer-Interaction studies).

Java breaks petite glass figurine of happiness this with a sledgehammer. Twice. First with the JVM and second with the "standardized gui" nonsense that swing and awt purport to be.

I respect SUN for pursuing the JVM technology, and I respect them magnitudes for their openness about it. But I cringe whenever I hear about another open source project that has embraced Java as a way to get around writing good software for all three platforms because, by definition, nobody gets what they expect from their OS. The reality is: we have three major operating systems and we should be interfacing with those systems the way they were designed...not drawing a new GUI foundation because their ideas don't fit our ideas.

This, in my opinion, is why waaay more than 90% of OSS projects never reach a user adoption significant in the eyes of Big Software. I'll stop now before I crush any more toes.