As a mature professional who stopped counting learned programming languages and frameworks long ago (I’m familiar with Kotlin too), I can tell you that Java is a modern tool by all measures. It may lack some features of other languages and platforms, but it is not features what defines relevance for modern applications. Your advocacy is important, we of course need progress and testing new concepts. Yet what ultimately matters is business value and user experience. Java is pretty good in delivering it and many professionals choose it for that reason, leaving new stuff to pet projects at home. It is not diehard conservatism that lets us make this choice, but a mere pragmatism. For me it is not obvious that Kotlin is better. There are risks associated with less mature platform that already costed one of my teams a couple of wasted sprints. Productivity and quality impact isn’t really noticeable (the biggest factor in those two measures is always communication, not tools).
> it is not features what defines relevance for modern applications
what? zero-effort null safety out of the box alone is immeasurably valuable
> leaving new stuff to pet projects at home... risks associated with less mature platform
I'm so sick of this argument, it presupposes that Java is the default and anything else by definition is just new, a trend, a fad. Kotlin is none of those things and you know it. Stop begging the question.
