There was certainly a lot of talk within the Java development community about how Java was going to meet or overtake native code as the HotSpot VM matured. See, for example (from 1998):

http://www.artima.com/designtechniques/hotspotP.html

"According to Sun Microsystems, the Hotspot virtual machine, Sun's next-generation Java virtual machine (JVM), promises to make Java "as fast as C++.""

I wonder how well modern JVMs compare to C++ compilers from 1998?

I'd say that statements like that are subject to some degree of interpretation. It's hard for one runtime to be definitively faster than another runtime. It is, however, quite possible for one runtime to have cases where it is better, cases where it is worse, and cases where it is equivalent such that it is reasonable to say that it is "as fast as" the other. Java tends to be a bit slower than C++ still, but the differences between it and "as fast as" are trivial enough that a number of HFT systems, for example, are written in Java.

While I think the comment here leaves that open as a possibility, the second sentence of the article it's from makes it pretty clear. "Specifically, Sun says that a platform-independent Java program delivered as bytecodes in class files will run on Hotspot at speeds on par with an equivalent C++ program compiled to a native executable."

There's not a lot of wiggle room there.

Considering that I can get different performance for the same C++ program simply by using different compiler, or even different compiler options, I'd say that there's a lot of wiggle room.

Actually, there is a country mile of wiggle room there. It doesn't have to be true of all programs for one, and "on par with" gives you plenty of wiggle room.

There's nothing wrong with trying to sell your product. But I hope Sun's salesmanship doesn't continue to deceive people.

Cliff Click, a smart man in whom I see many admirable qualities, than whom there are few more complete experts on the JVM, gave a tech talk at Facebook about how Java is faster than C++ just a few months ago. Tons of perfectly smart engineers sat and took it seriously. Much of the content was a rehash of this older discussion: http://www.azulsystems.com/blog/cliff/2009-09-06-java-vs-c-p...

There are plenty of serious, technically deep people trying to convince their colleagues that Java is as fast as C.

I know a professor who worked on HotSpot Java VM in early 2000s. He is a smart man, but he always makes these false claims how Java will be as fast as C++ the next years. He was the boss of a local Oracle Labs company, though he left that company recently and is now an C# advocate and make similar claims in favor of MS.

Such persons are quite annoying as they try to influence a lot of students.

Agree. Some kind of group hope, a part of issue w/ the Java lang. Data points in the other direction: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u32q/java.php

"Sieve of Erathosthenes"

Actually, I made fun of Fortran for that down below. I don't think my comment is a rant.