owenrh

I've been using Gurn (yeah I know it's an terrible name!) for over a year. I was initially pretty skeptical but it's totally won me over.

It is one of those tools that makes your everyday job way easier. I can type 'go instances' and boom I'm straight where I want to be in the AWS Console.

I can't imagine being without it now. It's such a great productivity tool. If they ever shutdown I will build a shoddy version just for myself, seriously.

We're using Java (and Google Web Toolkit) on thingloop.com, and it's working out great for us.

In answer to your questions:

1) Yeah, good cheap Java hosting doesn't seem to exist. That said, I think the Rackspace Cloud and Amazon EC2 are great solutions and great value for money.

2) Java is a high performance language, if you get performance issues it'll be your design/archiecture.

3) thingloop.com, successful from a technical standpoint, business-wise, the jury is still out!

On the whole question of which language, I'd say:

a) avoid religious arguments - my language is better than yours! They all have advantages and disadvantages.

b) a lot of it is down to what's cool. Ten years ago Java was the coolest kid on the block, now it's RoR. Thinking longer term, you might want to consider what the most available skillset is in your area for recruitment purposes.

c) if you've got a bunch of guys who already know a platform inside out, then stick with that. They'll almost certainly be way faster.

Without getting all programming language religious on you, I have to disagree with you. Most Java tools are open-source, e.g. Eclipse IDE, JBoss application server, Tomcat app server, etc, all market leaders, or near the top.

We've deployed a reasonable sized startup codebase for our project without paying a dime for tools and libraries.

Plus, we were also able to carry our Java coding skills across into our Android mobile app development.

I think there are pros and cons to most languages.