Reading the article, he discusses some places where language choice doesn't matter and some where it would (the unpredictable latency you get with Garbage collector even if average speed is the same). So it's not refreshingly undogmatic.

One thing the article doesn't mention is that Java once had a slow interpreter and now it has a potentially faster interpreter. When Java had a slow interpreter, then it would be inherently slow for a larger spectrum of problem - but still not all of them.