I learned Java after learning Python and C++. Even at the time, the combination of static typing and no macros/generics/templates was cringeworthy. Then C# came along with Generics and the Java leadership finally admitted they had a problem.

To be blunt: this is not hindsight. This is me remembering working with Java in the early 2000s. These were things that jumped out at me as an undergrad student as obvious pain-points in a new language I was learning that were not present in other languages I had used.