[NBJack]

As much of a fan as I am of Java, I have to agree. There are some real bombshells in the library that can either make your coding life or debugging a prod service miserable (sometimes both). Other additions are great, but have hurt readability a bit (i.e. Java lambdas).

Checked exceptions get a bad rep, but I've frequently found taking advantage of their hierarchical nature can be beneficial to at least making them less bad to catch. When I work with languages that have no exception support at all, I sometimes even miss them.

[flashgordon]

As much as "not" a big fan of java, I need to give credit where it is due.. as my (almost) first language almost 25 years ago I learnt heaps by going through the source code. Sure there were bad and (what are now) outdated conventions etc. But as a junior eng learning how layouts worked, how data structures were implemented, how network code was written and tons more, the Java src folder was a huge treasure mine. Did I mention swing?