[dnautics]

Not the OP, but i would have guessed that the (subjective) axes of "being better" are uncontroversial - by which I mean prepend "there are many who value that" in front of each:

- a GC that can has relatively smart defaults without having to tweak a ton of parameters

- don't have to ship a vm

- concurrency baked in from the start

- simpler language

- doesn't try to square everything into the OO paradigm

[pjmlp]

> a GC that can has relatively smart defaults without having to tweak a ton of parameters

Depends on the JVM being used

> don't have to ship a vm

You get to ship a runtime instead.

Which Java also allows since around 2000, given how long commercial AOT compilers do exist for Java.

> simpler language

Java 1.0 was also Go simple, and just like Go does nowadays, full of code generation tools to work around that simplicity.

> doesn't try to square everything into the OO paradigm

Interfaces are part of OOP, introduced by Objective-C protocols.

[dnautics]

> Depends on the JVM being used

Is picking a jvm not tweaking a parameter?

[pjmlp]

Just like picking Go, gccgo, TinyGo, TamaGo or whatever might come down the line.

[dnautics]

Nobody really does that.

[pjmlp]

They do, otherwise they wouldn't exist.