Of all pg's essays I just put the Java one down to a bad day at the office. He's obviously a. very smart guy (cf On Lisp) but some of his statements in that essay seem to be made out of genuine ignorance. Its fine to criticise the language but to criticise the users who at the time were mainly ex c++ many of whom built systems in their time that were elegant, reliable, scalable etc, was a mistake - I think.