>>36
I think Java is a useful example. It's hugely successful yet deeply flawed. It serves to exhibit what people will put up with. I probably don't have to convince you that it's got terrible GC, but I think it has value in framing the discussion, especially since it has prompted me to mention that GC can be a lot better than what many consider to be the state of the art. (Yes, Java actually gets praise for its GC.)
I can't engage on the readability topic because I have no idea how to measure that. We can probably agree on performance metrics, at least within certain givens, but I am sensing a deep disagreement on the readabilty topic already. I find functional code to be reasonably readable. I find C and Python equally readable. The last study I saw on readability was based on badly written Perl code. Even though readability is hugely important to me, I don't think it's something that can be addressed impartially.
If you want to suggest some readability metrics I might be interested in discussing it. They would have to be better than the likes of line count, symbol count, or statement/expression delimiters though.