Core Java systems are being written and updated at: Oracle, Amazon, Google, Netflix, IBM and almost all the Fortune 500 companies.

Java is also used by Facebook, Microsoft, Salesforce, Apple, and many other companies that aren't necessarily known for their Java development.

Java usually is the base for every core banking system that's not old enough to have been written in COBOL (and even those are being migrated to Java in many cases) or hasn't been written from scratch in .NET.

The same Java is also used by governments throughout the world.

If Oracle vanishes completely tomorrow, there's huge incentives for a community initiative to completely take it over ASAP. There's probably tens of billions of dollars in existing code bases that have to be maintained and extended.

More than that, Java's already 23 years old. It's not a new language. Plus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

Ten years is a very short time for a programming language. Python is decades old and hasn't hit its peak popularity yet. I don't know of a single mainstream language that has died, except for perhaps ColdFusion or ActionScript.

Depends on how you define death. There's ALGOL, SNOGOL, LOGO, Pascal, Visicalc, APL... They were all mainstream at a point, and they all still exist, but the userbase has become tiny.

OK, but it is "SNOBOL".

That too. :-)

> Python is decades old and hasn't hit its peak popularity yet.

What? Python's peak (2.7) has come and gone.

I really hope not. Modern Java is productive, fun and better performing than Go.

Modern Java is a pleasant experience compared to Go.

Can you elaborate? In what ways, is modern Java a more pleasant experience compared to Go?

Look at what happened to Kubernetes. They rewrote original Java code in Go and it's a mess because of Go's limited abstraction capabilities. Sure there's an element of rewriting in a new language and attempts to force idioms, but there's also the fact that Go literally hacks in special cases for generics, unavailable to users. They recognize the need for generics, but haven't implemented them, which is a problem for a complex project where abstraction might be useful.

If Graal had been mature at the time, I expect Kubernetes would still be written in Java.

If you mean due to AOT compilation to native code, there have been plenty of options since around 2000, their only "crime" is being commercial.

I'm aware, but I don't think any OSS project would have ever used them. Hence my mentioning Graal by name.

Ah ok.

Richer type system, richer concurrency, richer tooling, greatly advanced and advancing runtime, interoperability with multiple languages on the JVM, a naming system that doesn't cause frustrating workarounds a la the Kubernetes ObjectMeta / TypeMeta / "v1alpha1", "v1beta2", "v1" nonsense ...

Go is the language that taught me to really appreciate writing things in Java.

10 years is a long time in any business, and Java has been around more than 20. It is pervasive in enterpriseland; if nobody wrote a single line of greenfield Java code it will be around for decades. The COBOL of the modern era!

Java underpins Scala, Kotlin and Clojure.

So not just all the big corporates but plenty of tech companies like Facebook, Uber, Spotify, Twitter, Linkedin, Netflix, Apple, Google etc all rely heavily on it.