Java won by its portable deployment model, stack traces, GC, libraries and security sandbox safety. In over two decades, very few other platforms have come close to its promises. C# is perhaps much better, but has stronger proprietary ties and vendor lock-in.

Java became overcomplicated by frameworks and design patterns, so has always felt bloated and slow. But has worked best for business logic. Though is maybe behind COBOL thus far, and tends to hide/obscure logic. No two java designs looks the same, scales well or converge to clear consensus. The language did lower the bar for what cheap programmers could accomplish faster though.