It's not even about "programmers suck". It's about productivity.
I can, and have, written high performance systems in assembly (long ago). I've written many high performance systems in C. Rarely, but sometimes, still do.
But doing it in assembly takes a long time. No way to justify time to market on that one today. In C, sometimes it's worth it.
But Java productivity is so much higher and (if written properly) leaves very little performance on the table. It's the sweet spot of performance vs. productivity still today and has been for about 15 years (~Java 1.4).
I can, and have, written high performance systems in assembly (long ago). I've written many high performance systems in C. Rarely, but sometimes, still do.
But doing it in assembly takes a long time. No way to justify time to market on that one today. In C, sometimes it's worth it.
But Java productivity is so much higher and (if written properly) leaves very little performance on the table. It's the sweet spot of performance vs. productivity still today and has been for about 15 years (~Java 1.4).