That's not really true to the slightest. If anything, the advances in the JVM and the language itself have been making it even more attractive and distinct from its nearest competitors, making the gap even wider in its favor.
It does have some nice features, but it can get overwhelming quickly with the pace they're being added at, not to mention some features being quite nuanced or interact with each other in intricate ways.
At least for the time being, Java has exhaustive pattern matching and proper enums, whereas C# doesn't.
As well you should be and plan for that by either not going with a tech that will increment that way or making damn sure you are profitable enough to pay the bills.
In some sense that's not far from the truth. As soon as something goes to production it starts slipping out of sync with how it could/should be and the layers of dependencies start accumulating that make it harder to change (unless it's just dead code no one is using I suppose).
I do wish it would all get replaced by C#/.NET. With no exaggeration, it's better in every conceivable way. Java has no reason to exist beyond inertia when C# can replace it.
> Except you're locked into a more confined ecosystem.
The Microsoft ecosystem can become more confining if you continue to operate as if its 2008 and follow all their old patterns (e.g. IIS, Azure, et. al.)
For the more clever developer in 2023, you take .NET 7 and skip over all of the Azure-integrated bullshit. You can throw away 100% of their complex AspNetCore libraries in favor of minimal API integrations. You can do everything your way and run it wherever you want.
The entrapment in the Microsoft ecosystem is of a substantially different nature than entrapment in the Java ecosystem. Becoming mired in Microsoft licensing concerns is a matter of technical competence. Becoming mired in Oracle licensing concerns is a matter of business competence.
Instead, I just don't use Microsoft's stack, and install OpenJDK. That floats my boat for my "Enterprise Language for long-haul trucking" needs.
The other thing I do is being able to use multiple languages and using the right one for the job, and ensure that all are supported by GCC suite.
Well, I'm on a very different niche than many software developers here, but at least it gives me more freedom to do what I want to do, and how I accomplish these.
You forgot the JVM (and the tools built around it, so for example you can monitor / profile your app in production etc), and the massive galaxy of 3rd party libs that is the Java ecosystem.
Whether you like Java (the language) or not, Java (the ecosystem) will not go away. In fact, it is alive and well, and I would guess it is at least an order of magnitude bigger and more mature than the .net ecosystem.
If you don't like Java (the language), you can choose Kotlin (Java++), Scala (Haskell--), or other languages (eg. Groovy?)...
That's quite an exaggeration. The JVM philosophy is different from .NET's, even though there is a large overlap with them being VM based languages. C# has gotten too complex as a language, with so many features. C# also exposes lower level constructs, whereas the JVM tries to do a lot of different optimizations instead. The JVM has the best GCs in the industry, and the best monitoring and observability through JFR.
> C# has gotten too complex as a language, with so many features.
I really wouldn't say so. All the new features are convenient and easy to understand, especially if you have Visual Studio to teach them to you (type if (x == null) x = new .. and you get a popup to transform it into the new operator). It's not a zoo like C++.
Compare C#'s colored functions to Java's Loom. .NET has only one GC implementation, so if it doesn't work for your use case (low latency), you have no choice but to migrate to a different platform.
enterprises