Engage a feverant Java zealot in a discussion about the short comings of EJBs and they'll tout the advantages of Appservers. Correct them: "I'm not talking about the concept of app servers or CTM, etc etc, its the implementation provided by EJBs that I'm criticizing."

Why talk to ignorant zealots? Do you make your point clearly?

Talk about the RemoteException and the disgusting descriptors[...]

Nothing more to say on the RemoteException? So don't talk about it.

[...]the ridiculousness of the EJB stub interfaces, etc etc. They'll start touting XDoclet and various patterns and workarounds. However its kind of like arguing the logic of darwin to religious fundementalist. Workarounds don't make a crappy technology good.

I'm wondering who is the fundamentalist... And furthermore, is EJB a technology or a workaround? :-)

Regarding Generics:

So back to Java Generics and JSR-014. Well it IS just syntax candy. In rabidly trying to keep the VM at 2.0 they are going to create this disgusting half-assed thing that will produce a bunch of Bla$1.class files.

The main critic here is that the VM is going to stay compatible, that is you can put new code on an old VM without too much rewriting. What .Net does is currently nothing, what it will do is to modify the CLI and the CLR (see this paper). .Net can do this because it's still a young, not much used platform, it must take the opportunity to do it now.