Java, or projects in Java? Java pretty much has to, in order to preserve the most important feature a runtime can have: backwards compatibility.
Projects in Java are cursed from the beginning: the language has great constructs for boxing complexity (modifiers, inheritance, interfaces, generics, design patterns allowed by performant virtual calls, etc.). This means that when projects in other languages become unmanageable, Java will keep chugging business requirements like no other. Accumulating complexity is the fate of every successful system; and Java makes you go a long way.
Now, a newly arrived person on the job market will face systems with a pile of convoluted business logic a few century.human's high. The first ticket will be: 0.5 month of getting accustomed to the language/framework, 1 month of archeology, producing 50 lines of code, 150 of tests, break a few tests, 0.5 month of corrections; For something that would take one day as a greenfield project. The job might pay well, but will be very lowly gratifying.
Now the sound enterprise strategy is to keep using Java: the platform allows for deeper and finer integration into the business processes. But the sound individual strategy for newcomers is to stay the hell away from it. Oh, you will only work with Rust/Go/Elixir/etc? Here, have a greenfield project.
Clojure/Scala/Kotlin/Ceylon/Frege/Groovy might be the best of both worlds.
It sounds like you're basically saying its difficult and slow to work on large projects, and the solution is to not work on large projects. And that new languages implicitly mean smaller and thus easier projects because they haven't had time to grow.
The weird thing I always get with the always greenfield developers is how you know you aren't just creating even larger messes tomorrow vs the messes you're avoiding today. I guess it isn't your problem though if you're always working greenfield - it's someone else's.
Projects in Java are cursed from the beginning: the language has great constructs for boxing complexity (modifiers, inheritance, interfaces, generics, design patterns allowed by performant virtual calls, etc.). This means that when projects in other languages become unmanageable, Java will keep chugging business requirements like no other. Accumulating complexity is the fate of every successful system; and Java makes you go a long way.
Now, a newly arrived person on the job market will face systems with a pile of convoluted business logic a few century.human's high. The first ticket will be: 0.5 month of getting accustomed to the language/framework, 1 month of archeology, producing 50 lines of code, 150 of tests, break a few tests, 0.5 month of corrections; For something that would take one day as a greenfield project. The job might pay well, but will be very lowly gratifying.
Now the sound enterprise strategy is to keep using Java: the platform allows for deeper and finer integration into the business processes. But the sound individual strategy for newcomers is to stay the hell away from it. Oh, you will only work with Rust/Go/Elixir/etc? Here, have a greenfield project.
Clojure/Scala/Kotlin/Ceylon/Frege/Groovy might be the best of both worlds.