Java is IMHO one of the most underrated platforms outside of enterprise environments.
Most people also forget, that Java is not only a language, but also a platform, an ecosystem and active research is applied to many parts of Java.
Concerning Oracle: OpenJDK is actively supported by very different but big and capable companies (IBM, Amazon, Eclipse Foundation…). The quality of the language, libraries and documentation needs people which are payed to work on this, full time.
Bring to this the free IDEs one can get for Java - Eclipse and Netbeans are a little bit old school, but offer everything to build/debug and develop complex software.
Java is not my favorite programming language, but when I want to write interesting software and ensure it will be running for the next decade w/o significant changes, Java is really hard to beat.
Of course, in hindsight we know how to do a lot of things better as they were done in Java. Still, what other open source Language/Platform/documentation with the backing of capable companies and really independent and interoperable builds are out there?
One last note to all people which were damaged by Java in university or school: Usually the teachers/professors/lecturers have no real world experience of software development besides the usually university projects, and for the usual university projects which basically means getting small to midsize projects to run Java is total overkill.
Don’t confuse this with real world software projects in the industry, which are mission critical and need to work a decade from now on. Java was always a bread and butter language, but one which learned from other languages and even the verbosity makes sense, once one dives into code written a few years back by another person.
Using Debian for probably a decade now (before that, various Linux distributions).
IMHO only community driven distributions with great (in size as in quality) communities are worth investing time/energy and learning.
One reason to ditch Debian would be that the software I need to run would not run anymore on it or that there would be a too strong commercial influence on the project. Another reason is for play/entertainment where better options exist (SteamOS) or if I need up to date hardware support (Fedora).
After more than two decades with Linux, I will not play around with non mainstream distributions anymore. Have seen too many come and go, and in the end I would rather do something interesting with my computer than playing around with the Linux distribution of the week.