Even with all this it takes me substantially less time to get go, python, or ts working as a cli. Java cli is a solution looking for a problem
All of that to say, I’m also familiar with the problem.
For the past 3-4 years I’ve reached more for Go to my new CLI projects. Small differences in installed Java versions across clusters can be a problem, but for me the biggest issue is dealing with JVM arguments. I writing code for working with genomics data files. Sometimes these are large, and sometimes they are small. And I hate having to tell both my job scheduler (SLURM mainly these days) and the JVM how much memory to use.
This isn’t a problem in Go. So, that’s the language I gravitate to these days.
That's a great way of putting it. I'm a Java developer also; I'm most comfortable with Java and, dare I say, I like Java. But Java would be far down the list of tools I'd use to make a CL program.
Then when I had ability to write java scripts with dependencies, we added auto download of JDK and then made it so could run any jar (not just scripts) and I suddenly now have full debug support for anything I do + I can install and run this on any docker container or laptop - even my parents or a library computer running some ancient windows. Try that with npm and python :)
All I'm saying - I hear you and I grok why. What I'm saying that for at least close to 5 years at least last 3.5 years there been a way to use the jvm as easy and more reliable than python/nodescript/typescript....run cli's, swing/jfx, backend apps etc.
And in 2026 I want to make java TUI's a reality.