New language

Runtime optional.
GC optional.
Static typing.
Binary compatibility with C.
Algebraic types.
Lambdas.
Traits.
Safe shared mutable state.

>>13
Not quite, it's because it uses Java's GC. Over a decade has been spent tuning Java's GC for long-running non-interactive programs. It looks good in benchmarks.

That, and I hear Notch wrote some terrible code which exacerbated the problem.