Over years, I've had fun with programming languages. Each has its merits and failures. Java, like other languages has a mixture of both. A lot of people like to hate on java. I don't understand why. Lots of people hate on C, sometimes I see their point of view.

First, what I'd like to say is that java and c have extremely close performance.

Perl and python fall into the prototyping category, IMO. It's great, as Larry Wall puts it, "the Swiss Army chainsaw", sums up the language nicely. Great for small tasks, but I wouldn't use a chainsaw to make a cabinet.

Java is good for large projects, really good in fact.