I think that the idea behind Javajunkies is commendable, though I fear that the forums from Sun and JavaRanch may be leaving it with little energy.

I felt that Java was an abomination for the longest time, but today I will limit myself to regarding EJBs as an abomination, checked exceptions as the result of some sort psychotic episode, and the rest of the Java platform being tolerable to good. It seemed that Java was trying hard to do everything, and thus ended up being the wrong tool for every job. Since about version 1.3, though, it has improved very much, and I like the open-source nature of many major Java projects, particularly Eclipse, JUnit, and Ant. Java's performance has gotten much better over the years, too. I have less and less bad to say about it as time goes by, and I'll take Java over VB any day of the week.

Besides, I suspect that Java must have something going for it since the humble Xah Lee seems to dislike it almost as much as he dislikes Perl.

Perl still enjoys Most Favored Language Status with me, of course. Java still seems quite poopy and artless by comparison. ;)