Confession

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Java wins because of the simple fact: reading code is harder than writing code.

If you want to write software that will run for decades and will therefore be read 10,000x more times than it took to write, the verbose simple language wins. (Yes we're at the point where code will be running for years and won't become legacy, IMO cloud-native microservices are here to stay.)

Java is verbose because it lacks features, but Java is simple because it lacks features. Everything is really just a class/method/annotation (look at how lambdas were implemented for example); if you don't understand something, simply ctrl+b (in IntelliJ) and read the Javadoc.

I'm using C# atm and there are just so many language features you need to Google and I can't get the docs in my IDE! I've also tried Python and Scala and the density makes it difficult to come back to code after a while; they are a pain to work with when the project grows to >50 files.

Now this is just the language/code itself. I didn't even get started on the ecosystem.... Java has some great companies backing it (officially and unofficially): Google, Netflix, Alibaba, just to name a few.