> Java has a lot of issues, but in the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty good language.
Definitely not. Especially not in this day and age. Java has a pretty good language, java has a good ecosystem, java has a passable standard library, but in 2011 java is a crummy language.
Depends on what you want to do. Want to hack together a low-traffic website quickly? Java's a pretty poor choice. Want to build large-scale systems that are reliable and fast? Java might fit the bill pretty well. It's no coincidence that Google builds much of their infrastructure on Java. It's no coincidence that Hadoop is written in Java. And it's no coincidence that Twitter is rewriting much of their infrastructure in Java. Java is a good language for building Big Stuff.
Definitely not. Especially not in this day and age. Java has a pretty good language, java has a good ecosystem, java has a passable standard library, but in 2011 java is a crummy language.