Gang of Four?

They’re talking about this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns

Python is easy, but it can also be infuriating. Every time I use it, I'm reminded how much I loathe the use of whitespace to define blocks, and I really miss the straightforward type annotations of strong, non-dynamically typed languages.

There's always Kotlin. Of course I never understood the desirability of a VM language in the first place, why not just compile for different architecture?

Java was also my first introduction to programming as it was included in Computer Science in final year of school (at college, we did the trusty C).

I think they have replaced Java with Python now in schools because of the latter's popularity and also because many would argue, Python is slightly easier to learn than Java.

That makes more sense in context. Another Gang of Four (that I err, know more deeply for some reason) is(read:was) a political grouping in mid 70s in China.

A language I wish would die already, but there are still vendors that program in it, along with freaking Tomcat hosted applications. EduTech is still stuffed to the gills with it.

I'm still wondering what Java's niche is, it seems like it does everything, but nothing particularly well. I guess it found a home on Android, but I don't think that's because it's particularly well-suited for it.

Java was also my first introduction to programming as it was included in Computer Science in final year of school (at college, we did the trusty C).

I think they have replaced Java with Python now in schools because of the latter's popularity and also because many would argue, Python is slightly easier to learn than Java.

Unlike other older languages, such as Cobol and Fortran -- which are still used, but almost always in legacy projects -- Java has constantly evolved to meet new demands while maintaining backward compatibility.

can't speak on the FORTRAN claim but with COBOL this couldn't be less true. last i checked the newest Enterprise COBOL LTS is newer than Java's

It's a cycle all popular languages go through. First only experimental applications and super opinionated programmers use it. Then everyone wants to use it for everything. Then it finds a niche where it excels and settles.

I remember Java, C++, Python, and JavaScript going through those phases as well. Currently, everything is Rust.

The point of Java is to be a language for 90% of programmers. The vast majority of software development is not sexy, doesn't require a PhD. Java was intended to be a commoditising language and in that it succeeded wildly.

The argument I agree with is that Python is the best language to learn if it's your only language, and Java is the best first language if you're going to learn others. The syntax from Java is shared across so many other languages and it forces you to learn about things like objects and types. You could make an argument for C or C++ but Java's handholding is more beginner friendly imo

There's always Kotlin. Of course I never understood the desirability of a VM language in the first place, why not just compile for different architecture?

Java is nothing like Rust. Java was always sold as a low skill programmer language, Rust has a steep learning curve. Java tooling has always sucked where Rust has excellent tooling pretty much since 1.0, Java is extremely verbose and needs a lot of tools to generate code to be productive at all, Rust is very expressive and most people write the code by hand or just use built-in language features. Java has a culture of "who care about that backtrace in my log as long as the app does what it is supposed to" while Rust has a culture that very much cares about correctness more than performance. Java was always driven by CEOs pushing it on people from the top while Rust is very much a language programmers try to push into their companies from the bottom.

Also, none of the languages you listed have a very particular niche that differs from what they were used early on apart from Java which is now mostly used on the server and used to also be used in GUI applications more.