I think many of us have stale conceptions of Java formed decades ago. But some time ago, Java started evolving quickly and now isn’t that far off from Kotlin. When Kotlin started, that was not the case.
People still think of Java as stuffed full of wordiness, slow startup, garbage collection seizing up code, and long compile times, but that’s all in the past.
I'm not so sure about the slow startup claim here :-) I.e. Spring apps still take several MINUTES to start (with Java or Kotlin...)
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Java's dependency discovery mechanism has evolved much (if at all) from prehistoric times (hence, the slow startup remains). Although GraalVM sort of addresses that.
I think you are right. Many also got their first experience with Java in school or at their first job. Languages like Java/C# can seem intimidating at first.
People still think of Java as stuffed full of wordiness, slow startup, garbage collection seizing up code, and long compile times, but that’s all in the past.