A friend in my company recently attended a training titled "LSSD in Java" (LSSD = Large Scale Software Development). The trainer is a guy whom all of us (who attended his other trainings) consider a HUGE SHOT (big shot isn't big enough).
Now after 2 days of training guess what he concluded the training with: "Don't use Java for LSSD"
(where large is defined as 35-40K+ lines of code)
Beleive me when I say the guy is good enough to make such stmts and conduct such trainings (teaching "Don't use Java" in an "LSSD for Java" training) and probably making Rs. 10K (~250 US$) per person per day.

My question to you: Do you think Java is good enough for LSSD?

My own take on this is no. Java isn't good for most big/complex/time-critical backend applications. It was excellent for web/gui. (Now with .NET and C# it has competition in this area as well).

Depends on the project. 35-40k lines isn't really that big in the grand scheme of things. For very large apps, though, compiled languages (C, C++) would probably have noticeable advantages in performance though. I don't know how the JVM actually handles programs when it's executing (e.g. keep all of it in memory at once vs. dynamic loading), so I can't say for sure though...

If you talk of performance I can assure you C++ beats Java..
We're in GSM network element development so performance is of utmost importance, we've tried both (C++/Java) and concluded that Java is for O&M (Operation & Maintenance GUI...) and C++/C is for CP (Call Processing)..
There are some small part of Java code that JVM manages to execute fast enough but when thousands of lines of code written by lotsa guys is put together it's invariably slow.

Your trainer doesn't seem like a real professional to me. A professional would never make such a statement.

As far as speed is concerned, system nowadays come packed to the boot with resources -- a couple of hundred MB of RAM, atleast a 1Ghz CPU.

Performace -- yes. C/C++ beats Java but in what scenario? Considering my software would run on an average PC, the difference is insignificant. You would be surprised if I start naming companies who use Java as a programming language for their softaware development. The current business world runs on 2.5 major platforms -- Java / .NET / Python (the 1/2).

Each of the languages have a different place in the software development scene and I personally don't get started on language wars because I feel its a moot point. I respect all lanaguages and when time comes I would use the most appropriate tool to achieve the target put in front of me.

Oh and btw, I love C++. ;-)

>but when thousands of lines of code written by lotsa >guys is put together it's invariably slow

That's because most of the programmers these days are no better than monkeys with keyboards.

Ook? Eek ah ahk!