I read this and thought, "Thats us!"

From Ars Technica:

Bad code plagues business applications, especially Java ones



A new study examining 365 million lines of code in 745 applications identifies bad coding practices that affect security, performance and uptime, with Java Enterprise Edition applications having the greatest number of problems. Cast Software, which makes tools that automate the analysis of business applications, examined programs written in Java-EE, .NET, ABAP, C, C++, Cobol, Oracle Forms, and Visual Basic, used across a wide range of industries from energy and financial services to IT consulting, insurance, government, retail, telecom, and more.

Java-EE applications were the most prevalent in the Cast Report on Application Software Health, taking up 46 percent of all applications, and also had the most problems on average, while Cobol and SAP's ABAP had the fewest. Cast analyzed factors such as the stability of an application and likelihood of introducing defects when modifying it; efficiency of software performance; ability to prevent security breaches; transferability, the ease with which a new team can understand an application and become productive working on it; and the ability to quickly and easily modify an application.


Java was not the worst in terms of security, as .NET posted the worst security score and Cobol the best. But Java was the worst in performance, contributing to its overall poor score. "Modern development languages such as Java-EE are generally more flexible and allow developers to create dynamic constructs that can be riskier in operation," Cast wrote in its report. "This flexibility is an advantage that has encouraged their adoption, but can also be a drawback that results in less predictable system behavior."


[Moderator edit (MF): No need to quote whole article, copyright applies]