Java has decade(s) of cruft and breaking changes which LLMs were trained on. It's hard to compare. Plus Go compilation speed/test running provides quick iteration for LLMs.
There is a decently long list of breaking changes now. Removing JavaEE modules from the JDK, and restricting sun.misc.Unsafe, are the ones people usually run into.
A long enough list of small changes eventually equates to a big change. People generally can't update applications from Java 8 or below to a new one without code updates.
If hadoop did it, so can you. I'm talking about a project that stretched Java 8 to, and arguably beyond, its intended operational boundaries. Unlikely that you’re leaning on this boundary. It's Spring Boot upgrades that will be giving you troubles.
How is Java slow in any of these? Plenty of tricks e.g. AppCDS before the tests.