I think the reason is timing. Java took a huge market share during a software boom. It looked attractive at the time because it was an improvement over, but sti

I think the reason is timing. Java took a huge market share during a software boom. It looked attractive at the time because it was an improvement over, but still similar to, existing languages. It also appealed to a perceived need of the time, making it hard for mediocre programmers to screw up. We've learned since that it's much more important to make it hard for mediocre product managers to screw up by using a language that encourages rapid iteration. However, Java still gets chosen by occasional intelligent programmers because it developed a few robust libraries.