@You obviously have never done any large and serious coding
What does qualify as "serious" ? A Compiler/Translator of 12K lines, maybe ?
If yes, look at
http://sappeur.googlecode.com
Its very, very fast and done in C++. I have some serious doubt you can do the same in Java or .Net.
All the Java stuff I must use is sllllooowwww and memory-devouring. VS2010 apparently consumes RAM like crazy, as it is done in .Net.
I bet all the stuff you use to surf the internet, look at videos, write office documents is done in - TATA- C or C++.
When you have finished that Photoshop clone in Java, please call back. And waiting a minute for a rescale that takes two seconds for the C version does not qualify.
Regarding Pascal and Fortran; they ARE still in many ways better than C++ and certainly Java. Small, fast and easy to optimize automatically, namely. Delphi (the best Pascal compiler) compiles huge programs in seconds and the resulting executables are also very fast.
There was a time the majority of the world's population adopted Communism until they realized it was not a good idea. Same with Java.