JOIN US!! persons who hate JAVA!!

Seriously though, you gotta be into S&M if you decide to develop something in Java yourself and you'll be doing part of the job.

There's nothing wrong with Java.  If you want raw speed and low level functionality then fine, go use C.  Java provides well structured OOP functionality and a wealth of base-classes to aid the programmer (try coding networking in C).  Hell, these days with the JIT compiler (correct, I said compiler, not interpreter) Java byte-code runs natively on your OS.  The things that make Java seem slow are AWT and Swing. These provide the programmer with easy front-ends, and quicker program production while as a drawback require a lot of resources from the native classes.  When you say Java is slow, most of the time you're referring to the front-end.

Anyone want to discuss writing games in Java?  With native LWJGL back-end, Java OpenGL functionality and speed is directly comparable with a game written in C++.  No Swing or AWT to bog the application down.  Just a few seconds longer to load while the byte-code is compiled by the JIT compiler, then you get your C++ performance from Java.