Java is still the best programming language for some problems (and I say this as primarily a C++ and Python developer). For some larger-scale projects, performance requirements mean that scripting languages aren't going to cut it. The decision is then between C++ and Java, assuming you are not developing on Windows and you want a reasonably popular language. And between those two, everything you say about how Java sucks is correct, but C++ is arguably worse. In particular the combination of crashes without stack traces and the pain of maintaining separate .c and .h files.