Java's popularity is the very cause of all the bellyaching about Java. Most criticisms arise while looking at other people's code, and there's an awful lot of Java code to look at. Most of the criticism seems to be about Java culture (excessive abstraction) and Java coding standards, and less about the language itself. I hate most Java code too, but have chosen Java for projects.

Most notable to me is how many of the trendy languages on HN are less popular than assembly. Is that because assembly is somehow over represented, perhaps some library is checked in by lots of people? Or is this chart just extremely long-tailed?