Sure, things have been bolted on top of Java to allow this to happen. People have made use of them.

Java now has built in support for these things, so no longer will developers rely on third-party solutions.

This is great for the Java world, and for any languages that are being built on top of the JVM by extension.

I would politely disagree with your characterisation of it being just academic, as an engineer I find it incredibly exciting. Admittedly, my bar is pretty low for excitement these days.