[socialdemocrat]

This is the nature of technology and economics though. Widely used and mature technology will almost by definition be behind the state of the art. Progress is always happening and by definition a new language cannot achieve mass adoption over night.

Java is big because it has been around a long time and was decent when it came out. Java was the Go of its generation. Nothing radically new but wrapped up in a way people liked and was familiar with in large part due to the success of C/C++ prior.

Whatever achieves mass adoption after Java will also be behind the times by the time that happens, and as geeks we will have moved on to whatever is newer and cooler.

I am pretty neutral towards Java as a language. My biggest issue is with the software culture of over-engineering and complicating things. Java guys seems very dogmatic about how to design software.