I think I need to clear a common misconception people seem to have here: Oracle has very little to do with Java.

At most, Oracle has the following connection to Java:

• Own the trademark
• Have a build of the JDK/JRE with commercial support.

However, Java as a language's baseline comes from OpenJDK, an open source (GPL 2.0) community project which is upstream to several builds including Oracle's JVM. It follows a "bazaar" like development model similar to the Linux kernel where you can see their mailing lists and track what's being worked on. Anyone can contribute and the code is on Github: https://github.com/openjdk/jdk.

That being said, you don't even need to use Oracle's JDK (it sucks IMO) and use one of the community provided builds of OpenJDK. OpenJDK builds are provided by Eclipse, Amazon, Azul, Bellsoft and even Microsoft provides JDK/JRE builds. These are free of cost and have longer term support than Oracle's offering.

C++ is a monster. I'd suggest C instead to learn about these basic ideas.

Not true. They use the same model, executing compiled bytecode. It just feels like directly running a script because Python compiles it to bytecode on the fly, and because it is embarrassingly slow.

You can't learn C++. Some parts of it maybe.

No, it didn't.

Some of the GoF patterns over-emphasise inheritance, but by-and-large, you don't build large systems without either using or rediscovering software patterns, whether they're OO, FP, or what-have-you.

Its called Microsoft Java for a reason

What is the "everything" that Rust is being used in? From what I've heard its being used in the same place you'd use C or C++, not in any other niches.

"fucking oak what the fuck" still works so not that different

Oakscript does have a certain ring to it

Python is strongly typed, it's just not statically typed. Python with consistent type hinting is extremely similar to a statically typed language like C#.

Sure, and Kotlin is largely syntax sugar for Java. It's certainly nicer, but the semantics are largely the same.

I would argue that without consistent and enforced type hinting, dynamically typed languages offer very little benefit from type-checking at runtime. And with consistent, enforced type hinting, they might as well be considered actual statically typed languages.

Don't get me wrong, that's a good thing. Properly configured Python development environments basically give you both, even if I'm not a fan of the syntax.

You must not write much Kotlin then? It’s far more than sugar when a language fixes core issues in another.

It’s a modern, statically typed language that addresses many of Java’s longstanding limitations with robust type safety, expressive functional features, coroutine-based concurrency, and extensibility — all integrated natively. Interoperability with Java is a strength, not a sign of dependency.

Calling Kotlin merely syntactic sugar is like saying Swift is just Objective-C with prettier syntax — it misses the deep improvements in language design, safety, and developer experience.

I am going to be decapitated for this, but you're totally right.

You only have to look at Rust. An horrible language with a massive hype machine and an army of zealots pushing it everywhere.

I can't understand how people are complaining about the java boiler plate and its verbosity, while promoting Rust every time they can.

Yep, thanks to the AdoptOpenJDK project which really helped make OpenJDK builds available for all platforms. (It is now called Eclipse Temurin and Adoptium.)

For me it's the tooling surrounding it that makes it nice.

You don't think the $500 million marketing budget Sun put towards Java has anything to do with its success? It was more than just luck.

But nobody else does, and I need it more on code I am consuming than producing. In fact, many functions rely on being able to send various types for different behavior. Dynamic programming is crazy to me. It's like guessing. I don't know what type your code is accepting and I have to guess based on the name of read your code directly.

C++ has classes though and if you start with C and then try to go to other Object-oriented languages you’ll be a little lost. But, by learning C++ first, you’re pretty much learning C at the same time, you just need to avoid using classes.