A hoarder may have much more furniture than I do, but if I buy a sofa it doesn't mean I'm trying to catch up to the hoarder (who has five). Java isn't trying to catch up for the simple reason that we don't want it to have all the features Kotlin does; in fact, we're trying very hard to avoid that (not to mention that we have yet to adopt a single Kotlin feature; our features usually take a different form, even though Kotlin, Java, and many other languages often rely on the same inspiration, which is usually the ML language). That's because some languages aim to be feature-rich while others aim to be more minimal. Both are likely to accumulate features over time, but at very different rates (we'll hold off on features for years until we're satisfied that their value justifies the added complexity to the language, as keeping that relatively low is very important to us).

If you like a richer language, the Java platform offers you options, but many people prefer smaller languages (the number of Java Platform developers who use the Java language has remained pretty much at a constant ~90% for the past 15 or more years), but we're aware that a non-tiny minority of developers prefer richer languages, and so we accommodate them, too. Either way, 95% of the JDK is runtime (standard library and the JVM) and tooling, and you'll enjoy it regardless of which frontend language you prefer.

What I like about Java is that it is a deliberate late-mover language. It doesn't go for the latest shiny thing but looks at what features have proven themselves in other languages.

I can't help but to be a little sobered by the promises of Kotlin and C#. They look great on the surface, but once you have more complicated code to work on they tend to show warts quite fast.

Java is remarkably consistent and really doesn't have any sharp edges. Even with generics and type erasure, I found myself fighting the language semantics in C# way more often than Java.

I would definitely trim like 20% off scala, but I think slow compile times were the main reason. To a much lesser degree but sbt being one of the first things you deal with when learning the language didn't help.

If you put a gun to my head and tell me you can't write in kotlin, you must choose either Java or Scala - for a small project I think I choose modern Java. If you tell me I need to choose for a large cross team and mission critical project - I think I take the bullet.

Still, I have a soft spot in my heart for scala, learned a lot from it.

Java still inexplicably doesn't have first-class support for string interpolation/templates. They were slated to add it in Java 23, but they removed it from the preview and it hasn't been seen since.

https://www.happycoders.eu/java/string-templates/

Kotlin feels like it's having an identity crisis. The gap between the two languages continues to decrease. Kotlin is trying to be server-side, Android, but also every other platform (KMP). Feels like everything is brand new and also deprecated at the same time, always moving on to something new.

Maybe Roman really was the soul and it lost its touch without him?

I guess in the age of AI it doesn't matter since a few years from now, if you change your mind, you can just ask Jeeves to one-shot rewrite it back to Java.

> Java continues to try and catch up to Kotlin

Does it, really? Java has had pattern matching since 21 (2023). Kotlin still, to this day, the year of our Lord 2026, doesn't...

To be fair, sealed classes were introduced in Java 15 back in 2020. But granted pattern matching is what makes them really useful.

It is the Java Virtual Machine for a reason.

Without Google's godfather, Kotlin would be gone for now.

Kotlin is so great, where is the Kotlin Virtual Machine, showing how Kotlin can stand on its own?

This comment has major 2018 vibes. Most enterprises I know have have migrated back to mainline Java. We'll see if this changes again LLM era, now that prioritizing the talent pool is less important and the friction of migrating stacks is much reduced.

Scala*

Of all languages the only one it's trying to catch up to (and in places outran) is C#

With many others it doesn't compete because it would need a from-scratch rewrite of the runtime (Erlang/Elixir), or a from-scratch redesign of the type system (Rust, perhaps Swift).