> In my HN browsing I find Java is rarely actually discussed here, though often dismissed. I don't know why.
Personally, I feel like Java is not really as hated as some people make it out to be. It's a stable language that very few people choose for their "cool side project". At the same time, it has excellent tooling, mature and prod-ready open source frameworks, and backing of some giant companies.
This is not to say that Java is perfect. I think most dissatisfaction comes from students or junior people who are baffled by the complexity of Maven/Gradle configurations, strict project structure (where a class can be 10 directories deep), and Java's insistence on boilerplate (which is often challenged by new Java releases. Those, however, are quite rare in production; I'm starting to see Java 11 here and there but the majority of projects I've seen run 1.8).
Personally, I feel like Java is not really as hated as some people make it out to be. It's a stable language that very few people choose for their "cool side project". At the same time, it has excellent tooling, mature and prod-ready open source frameworks, and backing of some giant companies.
This is not to say that Java is perfect. I think most dissatisfaction comes from students or junior people who are baffled by the complexity of Maven/Gradle configurations, strict project structure (where a class can be 10 directories deep), and Java's insistence on boilerplate (which is often challenged by new Java releases. Those, however, are quite rare in production; I'm starting to see Java 11 here and there but the majority of projects I've seen run 1.8).