We use Java - although, to be quite honest we were a PHP shop starting out, but then we got a big-league client who said they wanted a system built from scratch and, oh by the way, "it has to be in Java". Four years later, we have a mid-size application (80K lines) that operates well and is attracting more clients, though I often feel we have stepped into a few 'pits of despair' while building it. There are several 1500-line servlets which grind away on certain tasks, for example.
The upside is, we are now putting out our I18N'ed version of the product and it was very easy to produce a version of the app in a Unicode-based language, which will probably land us several more clients this year.
In short, Java can be great and there are a lot of things out there to help you build an app, but it only works as long as you keep the code clean and exercise your own discipline to keep from getting too sloppy. Otherwise, you can wind up with code that needs a rewrite from day one.
The upside is, we are now putting out our I18N'ed version of the product and it was very easy to produce a version of the app in a Unicode-based language, which will probably land us several more clients this year.
In short, Java can be great and there are a lot of things out there to help you build an app, but it only works as long as you keep the code clean and exercise your own discipline to keep from getting too sloppy. Otherwise, you can wind up with code that needs a rewrite from day one.