A while back, someone started a
thread based on the claim that
Java wasn't used for large scale production applications. It smelled like a troll thread, but The fundamental topic has some validity. The answer is, yes, Java is used for huge sites.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/08/twitter_epic_traffic_saved_by_java/
Twitter survives election after Ruby-to-Java move
Peak traffic of 874,560 Tweets per minute without Fail Whale coming up for air
By Neil McAllister in San Francisco • Get more from this author
Micro-blogging site Twitter experienced record traffic as the results of the 2012 US Presidential election were announced on Tuesday night, but the service never faltered despite the increased load – something Twitter engineers credit to the company's move from Ruby to Java for its backend software.
According to a blog post by Mazen Rawashdeh, Twitter's VP of infrastructure operations engineering, Twitter users posted an average of 9,965 messages per second between the hours of 8:11pm and 9:11pm Pacific Time.
During a single second at 8:20pm, Twitter users produced 15,107 new posts, Rawashdeh writes, and during the peak traffic period of the evening they generated 874,560 posts in a single minute.