Why do you think Java is so much harder to refactor? Java and python are not that much different, and Java has static types which aid refactoring as well as a really strong tooling ecosystem. I haven't worked with large python codebases, but it hasn't really been my experience that refactoring Java is unusually hard, except insofar as average code quality among projects written in Java is probably lower.

Java IDEs have good support for refactoring since the late 90s:

  - rename/move class (and autoupdate all references)
  - change method signature

most of it is just stating what you want and the tool does it for you. I don't see that level of support from python IDEs.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9671783

> refactoring a equivalent Java project is way more challenging. I'd argue.

Sorry but you are wrong. Just plain wrong. There are benefits for both languages. But to say python is easier to refactor is like saying Java is more concise. It isn't.

>Refactoring a Java project takes a whole department and process management crew.

Has nothing to do with the language, but the company. A small company will refactor and have an update out same day in Java. An enterprise using some python will be as you say

Java is absolute garbage, and it is definitely not the kind of language I've in mind, which is something like Go, Rust, C#, Kotlin, Swift, ocaml... Even C++ is perhaps easier to understand than Java, if not because it tends to have half boilerplate than a similarly sized Java project.