Java itself is a nice language that can be lean and mean but has long been culturally bloated by early tooling and conventions. Since Java 8 (~10 years) the tid

Java itself is a nice language that can be lean and mean but has long been culturally bloated by early tooling and conventions. Since Java 8 (~10 years) the tide has reversed and it now mostly accepted to write terse code that is to the point. The language gets updated regularly and is managed very competently. Although it may seem to trail on some aspects vs other langs, it benefits from second mover advantage - new features are done right, for the right reasons. Any Java code ever written is essentially eternal, both in text and compiled bytecode form. Compiler and VM compatibility guarantees are unmatched. You can stumble upon 20 year old code and just use it. The platform is mature and robust. The JVM itself is a marvel of engineering. The ecosystem is extremely rich. There isn't a problem that wasn't addressed by a library or a stack overflow question. The tooling is unequalled. IDEs can reliably perform large code transformations because there is no preprocessor or macros and the type system is relatively sane. If you know Java you'll never be out of a job.