> This may be a very ignorant question
Sure, it is not a problem as long as you are aware of it.
> but is anyone using Java for new projects these days?
I work with large financial companies, think banks, brokerage houses, payments, etc.
Pretty much every large company in finances runs on Java and most new projects are in Java.
Java is uniquely suitable for this. I spent a lot of time thinking why is this. I think it is a combination of Java being relatively poor, handicapped language suitable for mediocre programmers not able to do much more than copy/paste. I love Common Lisp or Clojure but I quickly found using any powerful language with a software development team at a large bank must lead to a disaster. With Java, that disaster if it happens is limited a bit because there is less abstractions you can shoot your foot with.
Huge amount of boilerplate code means all projects look pretty much the same and every developer finds himself/herself right at home in a new project. If you know one Spring REST API you know pretty much all of them. Which is hugely important if your developers are barely able to learn new things.
Aside of the above, Java gained popularity due to its virtual machine, garbage collection, object orientation and pretty good standard library and ease of adding more dependencies to the project. Right now it is self sustaining situation because the amount of dependencies that are available, amount of software written and the fact that all those financial institutions have to maintain Java teams means, that it is almost always cheaper to hire more Java devs than try to use other languages.
Sure, it is not a problem as long as you are aware of it.
> but is anyone using Java for new projects these days?
I work with large financial companies, think banks, brokerage houses, payments, etc.
Pretty much every large company in finances runs on Java and most new projects are in Java.
Java is uniquely suitable for this. I spent a lot of time thinking why is this. I think it is a combination of Java being relatively poor, handicapped language suitable for mediocre programmers not able to do much more than copy/paste. I love Common Lisp or Clojure but I quickly found using any powerful language with a software development team at a large bank must lead to a disaster. With Java, that disaster if it happens is limited a bit because there is less abstractions you can shoot your foot with.
Huge amount of boilerplate code means all projects look pretty much the same and every developer finds himself/herself right at home in a new project. If you know one Spring REST API you know pretty much all of them. Which is hugely important if your developers are barely able to learn new things.
Aside of the above, Java gained popularity due to its virtual machine, garbage collection, object orientation and pretty good standard library and ease of adding more dependencies to the project. Right now it is self sustaining situation because the amount of dependencies that are available, amount of software written and the fact that all those financial institutions have to maintain Java teams means, that it is almost always cheaper to hire more Java devs than try to use other languages.