I'm already on the dark side. Rust isn't my cup of tea, but I do a lot of programming in C++, and hope to one day use Zig for low-level programming. But this does come at a considerable cost, so I do it only when I must -- i.e. I'm targeting a constrained environment or I really need low-level control. The cost isn't so much up front (aside from the big loss in observability), when you first write the code, but low-level languages result in rigid programs that are much harder to evolve over years, certainly with large teams, that with Java. Separate from that, JDK 14 doesn't behave like JDK 8. If you need performance and observability and you are not constrained, then Java is an excellent choice that can have a big positive impact on costs.