I used to be turned off by the boilerplate and verbose nature of the language. Over time, having all of this information out in the open removes a lot of guesswork based on tacit knowledge. I also really appreciate its static typing even though that can be limiting.

I think there's a lot to be said for how it's changed, also. The language has experienced improvements, but the community has also matured - a lot of the really awful frameworks and libraries have been replaced by much saner and simpler options.

You can still run into something old and enterprisey, but Java is much less baroque than it used to be for getting things done.

i love it

There's nothing to be hated about any programming language ever. People confuse "I don't understand it" with "I hate it".