When we ask companies why they picked Java, they mention backward compatibility, a good combination of performance, productivity and observability, and sustaine

When we ask companies why they picked Java, they mention backward compatibility, a good combination of performance, productivity and observability, and sustained popularity that means a large ecosystem and hiring pool and a good predictor of future popularity, which, alongside with backward compatibility means there's a good chance that their investment will be preserved. Unlike runtime features, such as great GC performance and observability tools, specific language features or lack thereof don't usually come up, so I don't know if that has a direct or an indirect effect, and it's certainly possible that had the Java language been less conservative it would have achieved similar success. It's just that no one has ever managed to do that, so there's no reason to change course. (We can argue over C++, but its super-popularity was very short-lived, certainly compared to Java) A direct effect that we do know about is teaching. Teachers do tell us that they don't like teaching rich languages as a first language. I don't think that the absolute pace matters so much, but rather the complexity of the language compared to alternatives. Teachers pick from a (very small) selection of relevant languages, and language simplicity is one of the important factors (so they tell us). In particular, those who pick Python always mention two factors: its simplicity compared to Java and the ease of getting started, which is why we'll be trying to address that second factor. > And for these businesses, the current pace Java is moving at is still too fast. The concrete issue is actually the difficult migration from 8 to 9+, which happened because Java lacked strong encapsulation until JDK 16, libraries depended on JDK internals, and those internals changed with changes to the runtime and libraries. Libraries quickly updated, but some did so with breaking changes of their own, which meant that old products needed a bit of work to upgrade, and some of them didn't have sufficient personnel. They are a minority now, though. This would have happened even with no changes to the language (and there weren't many in 9). > while Java only increased its pace rather recently, starting with Java 9 More precisely, it returned to its former pace after years of relative stagnation due to diminished resources. Although it may appear faster because partial language features are trickling in every six months rather than in a more complete form every three years. We're trying not to exceed that original pace, and yes, we are selective and conservative, in line with Gosling's original strategy of "a wolf in sheep's clothing" (an innovative runtime wrapped in a conservative language).