Well, to me Java is still new tech. ;-) But yes, it's certainly a reasonable sampling into non-machine code distribution, and enforcement of security rules when actually running/JITting the code, as were some mainframe developments before then.

Of course, Java certainly does have some higher level weaknesses as in the introspection API kerfuffle a while back, and is too locked into its Object Obsessed design for it to be a truly general purpose object code format.