Not all of Java culture is like this. There's a ton of really great code out there. Take a look at any Android library. There's no damned Spring anywhere.
I agree with you. I don't think there's one Java culture anymore. So what I mean by "Java culture" is POJOs, Factories, Maven, and IDE-dependence. Commodity-developer, large-single-program nonsense that corporations invented to compensate for mediocre engineers. Android is bringing a lot of good engineers into Java, and Scala and Clojure are also bringing a lot of good people into that ecosystem.
I think the issue with the enterprise, large-single-program Java world is that there isn't a feedback cycle. Curious, motivated engineers hate that kind of environment because they want to see things actually work. Clojure and Scala have the REPL, but large-program Java development doesn't.
I think the issue with the enterprise, large-single-program Java world is that there isn't a feedback cycle. Curious, motivated engineers hate that kind of environment because they want to see things actually work. Clojure and Scala have the REPL, but large-program Java development doesn't.