Also, Java only provided the lowest common denominator. A piece of software I worked on back then needed to start a long 2hr process, but only if there was more

Also, Java only provided the lowest common denominator. A piece of software I worked on back then needed to start a long 2hr process, but only if there was more than 2GB of free disk space (which was not a trivial requirement circa 2000). But Java did not have a way to query free disk space at the time because IIRC it was missing on one of the platforms (and then it wouldn't be "run everywhere"). So instead it would run, and if insufficient disk space would just fail. Java was always "write once, debug everywhere"