When you are actually coding Java -- yes. But as a sibling commenter pointed out, there's a lot of "XML as code" in the Java world. That's really hard to work with.
Please don't take it the wrong way, but the days of XML for everything are long gone, and for years in Java it's been XML for nothing as a counter reaction.
You must judge Java by the developments of the last decade at the very least. Otherwise you're ignoring the practitioners.
Java hasn't used XML in ages and you cannot fault it for legacy apps. You could similarly complain about the horror of EJBs -- sure, but the industry has moved on and acknowledged they were a mistake.
I think plurality of situations it's actually used for currently would be a better standard than what you're advocating for.
This has the advantage that the merits people judge things on, and the experience they will most likely have using it will line up.
The downside is that, the merits used may differ a bit between markets or industries, but I'm personally ok with that.
Imagine if I complained about Linux and all I used as an argument was the Unix Haters Handbook.
Imagine if I complained about Windows and the most recent version I had used was Windows 95.
If you want to be able to know the theoretical things you could do with the language, I think your definition is right.
If you want to know the most likely experience you would have using the language, I think mine is right.
I think it also depends on what circumstances you're using the language. Spinning up a new project probably lends itself more towards your definition. If you're looking to join an existing project, mine is probably more useful.
Java is a pretty solid tech and the JVM is one of the best runtimes in the world. But it does offer you infinite possibilities to write awful code and that made me less interested in it with time.
I am saying that when I was contracting with Java some years ago it was a complete crapshoot: you could get an almost brand new project with a lot of thought put in that made it a pleasure to work on, or you could get an ancient EJB mastodon that made you want to slit your wrists.
And that gamble still exists if you want to contract with Java. A lot of preliminary negotiations have to be done in order not to find yourself in a situation where you should have charged $30k a month due to the insane amount of digging you have to do just to make the thing accept one new feature.
It's much less annoying than "exciting" episodes and habits:
- let's see if our SSL certificate has been actually updated on all servers in the cluster
- let's find out what I need to restart after deploying my web app update
- who knows what the classpath loading order will be this time; if it's broken you can try a restart
- finish the test quickly before the sysadmin committee begins an application server upgrade and everything goes offline for as long as it takes, hopefully only a few hours