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Part of my problem with Java tools is that I'm always on a laptop, often running on battery, and it seems like every single Java-based program on OS X just sits around using 3-5% of the CPU even when idle.

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Well, that comes from the Garbage Collector, cleaning after all the programmers to lazy think about resource usage. But hey, never mention this when together with Java-developers, because saying something critical about garbage collection ist almost as bad as denying global warming.

What? I may be wrong but I get a macho vibe from your comment. Men handle memory themselves.

Wise men choose the best tool and sometimes not having to bother too much about memory handling frees up a lot of mental bandwidth to deal with much bigger problems.

Java programmers aren't too lazy to think about resource usage. They have just chosen to devote their intellectual resources to solving problems on a larger scale than memory management. This is a perfectly appropriate decision for a very large number of problem domains.

This is what good tools allow people to do.

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