Just for reference, before the torches and pitchforks come out against Oracle, Apache has butted heads with Sun over essentially the same issue: http://www.apache.org/jcp/sunopenletter.html
Being able to do something and actually understanding it aren't the same thing; I'm sure there are many things which you do which don't don't very much understand.
I very much agree you don't really understand something you can't explain.
I was just making light of the... dubious content that springs forth from 4chan. I do understand how he could be quite proud of the fact he created such an incredibly popular site.
4chan survived out of his sheer stubbornness to run the site at a loss for a long period of time and refusing to sell it to some porn network (possibly on multiple occasions?) It's impressive he was willing to spend the past 6 years running; 4chan clearly means a lot to him, god knows why.
The JVM is a platform, much like x86/linux or PPC/mac. It's always advantageous to have a better understanding of the platform your code will be working on, but it's not strictly required to be an effective programmer.
With that aside, I think it's certainly worthwhile to take the time and get a basic understanding of Java, as well as survey what is available in terms of libraries (both standard and 3rd party libraries). Some of the biggest appeal of these languages comes from the fact that they're able to leverage all this existing Java code.
Very true about everyone being different. When I saw first diagnosed with ADHD-I, my pschyiatrist began with Ritalin. While it definitely helped me focus more, the come downs were absolutely awful and I'd feel incredibly depressed when it wore off.
Adderall worked much better for me in this regard and the come down was much less harsh. I take 20 mg IR a day - I try to keep it down to 3-4 days a week to stave of tolerance as I'm very worried about it.