I'd argue that Java ultimately failed to innovate over C++ in the way that Python did. It added GC, but it's still clunky and hard to work with. In that sense,

I'd argue that Java ultimately failed to innovate over C++ in the way that Python did. It added GC, but it's still clunky and hard to work with. In that sense, it's more of a pre-Python language, even though it's a few years younger than Python.