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DieHard, the Software
Roland Piquepaille writes "No, it's not another movie sequel. DieHard is a piece of software which helps programs to run correctly and protects them from a range of security vulnerabilities. It has been developed by computer scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst — and Microsoft. DieHard prevents crashes and hacker attacks by focusing on memory. Our computers have thousands times more memory than 20 years ago. Still, programmers are privileging speed and efficiency over security, which leads to the famous "buffer overflows" which are exploited by hackers."
"Java is slow" is the stated reason. As you noted, it is not the actual reason. To tell the actual reason is difficult, but in short Java reminds us too much of what it should have been.
The basic complaints I have heard are these:
Complaint 1: Java is slow.
As you stated, this is not a meaningful complaint.
Complaint 2: Garbage Collection stinks
GC is an obvious requirement of a "safe" language. As implemented in Java, it is downright stupid. When doing something CPU intensive, the GC never runs, leading to gobbling up memory until there is no more and thrashing to death. I'm sure that somebody is going to dig up that paging-free GC paper, but pay attention: that is a kernel-level GC.
Complaint 3: Swing is ugly/leaks memory
The first is a matter of opinion. The second is well-known. Swing keeps references to long-dead components hidden in internal collections leading to massive memory leaks. These memory leaks can be propagated to the parent application if it is also written in Java.
Complaint 4: Bad build system
Java cannot do incremental builds if class files have circular references. In a small project of about ten classes I was working on, the only way to build it was "rm *.class ; javac *.java"
Complaint 5: Tied class hierarchy to filesystem hierarchy
This was just stupid and interacts badly with Windows (and anything else with a case insensitive filesystem). It is even worse for someone who is first learning the language. It also makes renaming classes have a very bad effect on source control.
Complaint 6: Lack of C++ templates
C++ has some of its own faults. Fortunately its template system can be leveraged to fix quite a few of them. Java's generics have insufficient power to do the same thing.
Complaint 7: Lack of unsigned integer
These are oh-so-necessary when doing all kinds of things with binary formats. Too bad Java and all its descendents don't have them.
Complaint 8: Verbosity without a point
It has gotten so bad in places that I am strongly tempted to pass Java through the C preprocessor first, but I can't do that very well because of 4.