I remember the announcement, and being thrilled as I poured over the documentation and did some Java experiments.

I didn't really get into programming it for my job until 1.1.4 though, and I remember being skeptical about the language's future when they changed the versioning a year later to Java 2, 3, etc.

I continued with Java as my main language on the job until 2017. I should note that my coding for work became a mix of Android Dalvik Java and J2EE around 2009, and then focused on Android from 2013 to about 2016, with some Elixir and occasional J2EE work (Java 8). In 2016 my main language at work became C++, with some Rust.

Revisiting Java and learning modern Java (Java 13-16) is one of my goals for 2021. That's driven by commercial necessity though. That is second to laying the groundwork for a full time Rust job though. Rust is the language that fills my heart, through and through.