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    Today's VM's have better performance than you give them credit for. The use of a VM gives you all of the managed goodies like a type system, library framework and garbage collection for free. Commented Apr 18, 2012 at 23:30
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    @Robert: Keep in mind, not all native code is C or C++. They're not slow to write programs in because they're native and therefore "deal with a lot of low-level intricacies;" they're slow to write programs in because they're poorly-designed languages that don't do a good job of dealing with the low-level stuff. But you can get C-level performance out of Delphi with the same ease of development that you find in managed languages. Commented Apr 18, 2012 at 23:43
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    @Andrew: People can say Java is fast according to some benchmark that tests some algorithm in some isolated case. But then you go and run an actual Java program, like OpenOffice, and it takes 30 seconds to open the freaking Save dialog, compared to about 1-2 seconds on native code, and they come to the conclusion that all that theoretical speed in the benchmarks means nothing; Java is still slow. Commented Apr 18, 2012 at 23:51
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    @MasonWheeler As you deleted your comment and expanded on a new one. The abundance of people that can get away with "programming" in the Java language is significantly higher because the barrier of entry for C and C++ is prohibitive, thus really bad programs. Java is not slow and anecdotal evidence of a horrific application suite does not prove otherwise. Commented Apr 18, 2012 at 23:54
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    @MasonWheeler: Just to clear up a common misconception: OpenOffice is not written in Java - it's mostly in C++. It only needs Java for some special functions. See wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Java_and_OpenOffice.org . Commented Apr 19, 2012 at 9:42