Java is “safe” for corporate managers. I think it is less often you see startups without corporate managers choosing Java (sorry, no stats off hand), and more often you will see Java or .NET in large corporate environments.

Safe means several things, including the ability to hire talent. Or that the other stuff is based on Java, so we need to stay with it. Or that is what we learned in school. Many reasons.

Few managers will get fired for choosing Java or .NET, but they may get fired if they choose Python or Ruby and it doesn’t “work out”.

I heard a developer I very much respect tell me once:

“Java allows mediocre developers to crank out mediocre software at a predictable pace” — And it makes sense! There are endless docs to read, books to digest, and springs and beans to play with.

(Note: observing from the sidelines here. I almost adopted Java for web-development once… I was that fed up with PHP. We ended up standardizing on Python 3, and could not be happier at this point. But there was no “manual” to read — we built our own infrastructure)