Java has its technical issues, but for a startup its biggest liability is that its vibe is the polar opposite of how startups want to see themselves and be seen by others. It's reliable, stodgy, boring, conventional. How are you going to convince people that your project is "disruptive" if you aren't willing to embrace a younger, edgier tech stack?
The people being convinced in this scenario are VCs, not customers, and the point is that VCs want to hear how your tech stack is going to morph into the second coming of crypto so they can get a huge exit. It has nothing to do with actually getting customers.
From a Devops perspective, I think people are accustomed to staring at a screenful of yaml or json output when something goes wrong, but not a screenful of XML. But at the sams time, a lot of places still use Jenkins, which is now the mature, legacy product. If you've been in the industry for more than a decade, this comes across as ironic, but no one knows what the next thing will be, that will finally put yaml in the rear-view mirror where it belongs.
