A lot of this thread is in regard to development in Java, but a lot of the noise and "unnecessary complexity" also involves end user applications.
I spent a lot of time supporting Java based desktop applications. I've seen a situation where a single organisation sells two products. And the installation guide basically says "these applications need an absolutely correct JRE version, down to the point release, or they will fail to run. And they will only use the system default, and don't have any concept of bundled Java. And they don't support the same version of Java, so our recommendation is to give users two desktops".
And I know that's not Java's fault, but when a certain monopoly releases every single application with that anti-pattern, you get pretty sick of see null pointer exception errors because a user applied a (two year old) Java security update.
Complexity for the sake of complexity has badly tarnished the Java ecosystem's reputation. I feel like the community has countered that phase by creating new, smaller tools, more modular tools, similar to what exist in other ecosystems, but the foothold of bloated, overly complicated crap is still strong in the enterprise world.
A simple rule of thumb is just don't use anything with the word "Spring" in it, and you're well on your way.
I spent a lot of time supporting Java based desktop applications. I've seen a situation where a single organisation sells two products. And the installation guide basically says "these applications need an absolutely correct JRE version, down to the point release, or they will fail to run. And they will only use the system default, and don't have any concept of bundled Java. And they don't support the same version of Java, so our recommendation is to give users two desktops".
And I know that's not Java's fault, but when a certain monopoly releases every single application with that anti-pattern, you get pretty sick of see null pointer exception errors because a user applied a (two year old) Java security update.