I don't get this attitude. Optimizing your code is a pretty normal thing to do. Running performance analysis, finding hotspots and tuning them.
I would prefer tuning my code over tuning a garbage collector as tuning code is more transparent. It depends on your background. If you are used to native code development like me, then you are used to thinking about how code get compiled and how memory is used.
I suppose in the Java world, these things are treated as black boxes. The downside of that is that you get no stability under your feet. Everything is up to whatever garbage collector you use and how that is tuned. I am sure many people like that, but I would prefer to be in control over my own code and understand why it performs and doesn't perform. I want optimization to be explicit rather than based on lots of magical tweaking by some GC expert.
