Greentext

Could be worse, could be programming Javascript (or Typescript).

You're not stuck with it Anon. You can use something different!

Aside from the general stupidity, Java is a heavily front-loaded language in my experience. I'm not going to engage in any tribalism about it or claim that it's better or worse than others. As a matter of personal taste, I have come to like it, but I had to learn a lot until I reached a level of proficiency where I started considering it usable.

Likewise, there is a level of preparation on the target machines: "Platform-independent" just means you don't have to compile the program itself for different platforms and architectures like you would with C and its kin, as long as the target machines have an appropriate runtime installed.

Libraries and library management is a whole thing in every general-purpose language I've dealt with so far. DSLs get away with including everything domain-specific, but non-specific languages can't possibly cover everything. Again, Java has a steep learning curve for things like Maven - I find it to be powerful for the things I've used it in, but it's a lot to wrap your head around.

It definitely isn't beginner-friendly and I still think my university was wrong to start right into it with the first programming classes. Part of it was the teacher (Technically excellent, didactically atrocious), but it also wasn't a great entry point into programming in general.

I started with java for school. The day I tried C for the first time I was flabbergasted, "what do you mean it doesn't matter which order I put things in?"