My first exposure to programming, the AP CS exam (and its accompanying course), was in java. My first hobby foray into programming (Minecraft) was Java. So, I'm

My first exposure to programming, the AP CS exam (and its accompanying course), was in java. My first hobby foray into programming (Minecraft) was Java. So, I'm heavily biased here by my familiarity. However, in the years since, I've done a lot of time where my primary focus at jobs was, among others: python data stuff, "fullstack" stuff, Scala stuff, and golang stuff. And I just keep coming back to Java as my overall favorite. My personal diff against most languages goes something like: 1. Stuff rots a lot less fast than in python and js. Code keeps working for longer, dependency goofiness happens a lot less, etc. 2. It's just less clunky than golang - but this is mostly my own preferences. I often describe go as if someone designed a language, and then had this list of hard language design problems, and were I to look at this list, I would go "hmm yes these are hard problems where all the options have drawbacks", and then for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM they picked the compromise I would not have picked. So it's just death by a thousand little things that annoy me. My current job is golang though so I'm wondering if I'll come around to it or something. We shall see. 3. Java just doesn't encourage such terrible cleverness that Scala (and to a lesser extent python and js) invites. This might be cultural too where Scala has this functional programming fanatics segment who love the cats library a little too much. But never have I ever before seen so much code that's just intractable to junior devs, and requires far too much brain-CPU for mids and seniors to read. Sure you can get into a lot of trouble with Java's reflection, but IME many java devs are suitably reluctant to go reflection crazy. 4. Damn is it fast by default. And can be REALLY fast if you specifically focus on a specific path. 5. The tooling is so mature. Does python or go even have anything like VisualVM? And as I understand it, even VisualVM is old hat compared to JFR, though I've not looked closely there. 6. The library ecosystem. It's even more expansive then npm but 10x less thrashy and churny. I particularly like that there's this interesting niche of academic libraries that end up out there that you might find yourself bumping into now and then. 7. Packaging. People use maven. Even people who use gradle still basically are just using maven with extra steps. Sure it's XML but aside from adding dependencies, you hardly touch it. And if your build system truly needs to be weird (like, say, android), then gradle is right there for you. 2 tools for the whole ecosystem. How many does python have again? I find I have little patience for packaging problems and I suspect some of it stems from the fact that if I were using Java, I wouldn't be having packaging problems. I'm sure I could go on, but I'll cut it here. For a million reasons, I find stuff built in Java just works and keeps working (both dev-environment and in prod) far more probably and for longer than in other languages and stacks. And it's fast enough to develop that I'd say it's well within range of python and ruby and such, for anything that bigger than a couple files.