(edit: sorry, reply does not really match your post, might have been better a level up? The bar connection to the "java vs c++" that I can come up with is that

(edit: sorry, reply does not really match your post, might have been better a level up? The bar connection to the "java vs c++" that I can come up with is that the pass by reference is not much of an issue when the general mindset is mutation-averse) Java has come a long way since the "OOP is the bee's knees" days when people fully bought into OOP's out of sight, out of mind promise about mutable state. This started long before language features like records gave post-OOP the official blessing. Along the way have been a few odd intermediate stages like the bean craze that was all about exposing state and pretending that it's still OOP somehow, and the AOP adventures that explored ways to get along with all that mutability.