Oh, this is just a tongue-in-cheek joke; java has really cool stuff, I actually code in java every morning and I really like the JVM and the JIT, without it, clojure, jruby and jython wouldn't exist, and jruby is way cooler than Cruby!
You're right, we can't be saying that a language sucks because it doesn't look cool in some coding styles. Is like trying to do fancy OOP in pure scheme or common lisp without the CLOS!
I know, and I both get and appreciate the joke. There are, however, a lot of people who think Java's (substantial) verbosity is a legitimate complaint against a language intended to do what it does. It's really neat to be able to accomplish something cool with list comprehension in Python, but when you're working on a massive codebase that might have 60 people working on the same code, it's nice to have the abstraction that Java was designed for, and the most basic syntax that a C-like language will allow.
There are, however, a lot of people who think Java's (substantial) verbosity is a legitimate complaint against a language intended to do what it does.
It is a legitimate complaint. Having to write loads of boilerplate makes the code more difficult to read and understand, and increases the surface area for bugs to sneak in. That's true for both one-off scripts and huge enterprisey systems.
Yep, in an environment like that the serious architecture java enforces is a good thing, especially with heterogenous groups of not-necessarily-hackers-but-good-coders.
You're right, we can't be saying that a language sucks because it doesn't look cool in some coding styles. Is like trying to do fancy OOP in pure scheme or common lisp without the CLOS!