Also as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, trading systems don't suffer from frequent cold restarts, so hotspot work amortizes extremely well. So Java is much more optimal there than e.g. a command line tool.

But on perceptions: naive perceptions don't justify a false statement. So why draw focus to them, why excuse them? Facts trump perceptions.

Also another example is those that perceive the JVM as slow due to using it with Clojure, when the slowness in this case is caused by the Clojure implementation itself.

I use Java since the very early days, and am well aware of them, as are my fellow Java developers, when I work in Java projects.

Even in more enlightened scenarios a REPL on jruby is just eye-wateringly painful unless you've all the "secret speedups" enabled.

In many more modern development cultures such secrets are generally looked upon as "Yak Shaving".