[pron]

Java runs a Hello World, cold, in a packaged JAR, in about 40ms. What you've seen isn't JVM startup but programs that do a lot at initialisation (like MS Word), as many Java programs like to do (because they often expect to run for a long time, so they don't care about startup time).

[pdimitar]

I have not worked with Java in a long time but I seem to remember that most Java programs also accrue a good amount of dependencies and some of them have their own init routines.

That adds up, fast. No idea how is it nowadays, admittedly. Maybe a ton of optimization work was done.

[Mashimo]

> I have not worked with Java in a long time > No idea how is it nowadays, admittedly.

Yes, between Java 8 and modern java there were changes to the GC, startup time, JIT and probably more.

If you want, it java should now start pretty quickly.