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What does Java do differently that it doesn't seem to have adoption problems?

It doesn't break compatibility. (Almost) ever. Meaning that (almost) all the code that used to compile on Java 1, or binary code compiled with the JDK 1.0, still works with the JDK 8.

(It's the main reason why generics in Java suck, btw: extreme backward compatiblity.)

90% of Java 1 code works on Java 8.

There are still enterprise apps stuck on Java 4, 5 and 6.

More importantly, bytecode produced by old Java compilers still runs on new VMs.

I believe that if Python 3 had been able to call into Python 2 modules (even by embedding CPython2) adoption would've been better.

I think byte code compatibility is gone now, its supports the current and previous versions only.

I worked on one such app that went to production a month ago. Java 6. :'(

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