Speaking as a younger developer at the time, Java just seemed weak compared to my favorites -- Common Lisp and Scheme. It lacked a proper procedural abstraction and forced you to do everything through classes and objects in a way that not even Smalltalk, having blocks, demanded. This was especially the case when it became an enterprise language and the standard development process involved lots of boilerplate. Also, a lot of kids came out of school knowing almost only Java, and it seems they were cut off from different worlds of development which could provide some insights. Even C++, which I loathed, had things to teach.

I've grown up a bit since then, and so has Java. These days I work in Java for my day job, and it's perfectly fine. I don't even mind all the boilerplate, I can look at a page of code and just see blonde, brunette, redhead.

But I still love Common Lisp and Scheme much more.