[Secretmapper]

I would say cross platform apps, and an 'alternative to C/C++' was Java's killer app. Popularity as a backend language comes as a side effect of its general popularity (a la Node w/ Javascript, though there's something to be said about Node's 'different' approach)

[dehrmann]

> alternative to C/C++

Safety and garbage collection.

[HelloNurse]

In very practical terms, dependably obtaining a stack trace that says "NullPointerException" or the like instead of silent and intermittent memory corruption was more than enough to attract shell-shocked C and C++ programmers.

[sgt101]

This. Also the libraries - in 1994 c++ toolkits were very poor - I was there, it was terrible - the Java libraries and in particular AWT were just fantastic. Basically features and deliveries that required weeks of heartache and grind could be delivered in hours.