Last night, I had some JSP problems that were quite difficult to debug. The problem was that although the JSP failed to compile, the stack trace was not specific and one could not determine where the actual error started or ended. Instead, the error log showed a simple, "overflow error." How can one detect what part of the JSP page died at? The fact that JSPs are compiled into a Java class disallows one to easily locate the problem in the page, especially if one has to go through a long log file. Not to mention making the changes, either re-waring/deploying the file and waiting for the page to compile is quite annoying, at least for prompt development.
I'm being convinced daily that Java is a terrible language for the web. Even with all the various frameworks and such, the incredible number of dependencies and difficulties with configuration and dependency hell makes Java incredibly brittle. It's without a doubt a horrible language for small sites, considering the overhead.
At this point, the only chief advantage I truly see in a language like Java is the large amount of corporate support, services and major API/frameworks and systems. However, as more open scripting languages mature, I think they will slowly overtake Java once large employers see the advantage of the agility for development. You can still get stability through scripting, open languages, just not the support (which to me is massively overrated).
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