On a more serious note, most Java code on Github is now written by Copilot.

Also, you will find a java library for that random new tech you want to use, while it is likely missing for .NET.

For example, in the Monogame game library, you can build a self contained binary for Windows, Linux or MacOSX nearly effortlessly with just a single command line.

Xcode and Visual Studio Code feel so much snappier on the same machine.

I also strongly prefer the keyboard shortcut set JetBrains uses. Having to reach all the way up to my function keys for combo operations makes me sad; even when I use other IDEs I love using an Intellij keybinding when available to quickly jump in and be efficient.

But to your point, I also tend to use it on higher end workstations (i.e. minimum of 16GB RAM, local repo pulls on fast SSDs, tons of logical cores, etc.).

Most major web services have java microservices that take on the performance critical and logic intensive parts of the business

On the server front many cloud infrastructures themselves, apple servers, pretty much every top 500 company has some form of business critical infrastructure chugging along on top of the JVM happily.

I can attest that AWT and Swing were hot garbage 20 years ago, though. The cross-platform aspect worked great, but the algorithms weren't worth making cross-platform to begin with. It was basically a giant GUI ecosystem written by people with no understanding of how to implement graphics efficiently. My favorite was how they bragged about their "lightweight" visual components that don't require OS-level window objects. Except, OS window objects are part of an algorithm that tracks exposure regions and repaints it efficiently without needing to redraw the whole screen. Swing took the approach of repainting the entire application window in a back-buffer on every visual change and then copying that up to the entire application window area, even for things as small as tooltip pop-ups or menus.

I haven't checked which GUI framework DBeaver is using. I suppose it's possible that it is Swing and my workstation is just so fast these days that the inefficiency doesn't matter.

Now, your assertion about scaling to more engineers may be true but I’d argue tooling is the main reason for this because Java certainly doesn’t enforce any particular style of programming.

For an example of "modern Java" I would point at something like this (which I wrote, sorry about the hubris):

https://github.com/stickfigure/hattery

Checked exceptions get a bad rep, but I've frequently found taking advantage of their hierarchical nature can be beneficial to at least making them less bad to catch. When I work with languages that have no exception support at all, I sometimes even miss them.

The problem with checked exceptions is that methods throwing them force its callers to react to the even if they are irrelevant to them. In 99% of cases I don't have any JSON specific error handling, yet Jackson forces me to do a try-catch-rethrow ceremony in thpse 99% to declare I don't want to do anything specific.

Comment for a method says "null safe" - why not use an annotation?

A package called "util" is a code smell for me.

UrlUtils only provides two methods for URL encoding so why not name it appropriately?

How would you refactor this to avoid a util package or a UrlUtils class?

It makes sense in large applications with experienced developers, but it sucks to learn.