alt Hacker NewsI understand from where your reply is coming from, but again, I was reading the same opinions about Java since more than 2 decades ago.
> overwhelmingly driven by existing large enterprise codebases
That happens with all mainstream languages, but it's a feedback cycle. The more popular a language is (in large enterprise codebases), the more it will get used in new projects, for obvious reasons. People want to get shit done and to have good ROI and maintenance costs. Therefore, the availability of documentation, tooling, libraries, and developers helps, in large and small projects alike.
And yes, Java is quite fresh, IMO.
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Two decades ago was 2004; that would be when Java first shipped generics. I remember those times and I don't think the sentiment was similar then. People certainly had many complaints about Java, and more specifically about some elements of the stack such as EJB, but as a whole I don't recall it being predominantly seen as "legacy" back then the way it is now.
> The more popular a language is (in large enterprise codebases), the more it will get used in new projects
It seems to me the more popular a language, the more poorly written libraries are found in it, which soon starts to draw people away from what is popular to a new language that has a limited library ecosystem thinking they can fix the mistakes they saw last time and make a name for themselves in the process. Lather, rinse, repeat.