[ponkpanda]

I can't speak for you personally but I think its simpler than that - Java is unfashionable because it's ubiquitous. It's the Ford of programming languages. Not every problem needs a Ferrari - indeed its bad for the organization to be building everything with Ferraris.

I do wonder whether someone has looked at the game theory of all this - how devs (and employers) pick langs and frameworks as a strategy to maximize their respective positions under competition.

It's also used by some pretty huge and non-middling corporations. I don't know why I'm defending it - I find Java a too verbose and don't use it personally- however if I were employing and needed to build anything that wasn't a game, an OS, embedded etc. I'd go with Java for large chunks of it because I can find good people to build, maintain and improve it - for years to come. I'd probably throw in some Go and perhaps C++ for compute bottlenecks.