> that was actively encouraged by the design of the language.
Java hasn't changed
that much since the "hellscape" 00s. Is it better now? Or what is specific to the language the encourages "the mess of DAOs and Factories"? You can make all of those same mistakes in Python, C# or C++. I have used Java for about 15 years now and I have never written any of that junky enterprise crap with a million layers of OO.
> I never use interfaces or the like.
This is the first that I heard any disdain towards interfaces. What is there not to like?
It insists upon itself. That’s really the problem with Java’s design philosophy from that era; it encourages ceremony. Even if you don’t write the full-on "Enterprise™" soup of DAOs, Factories, and ServiceLocators, the language’s type system and conventions gently nudge you toward abstraction layers you don’t actually need.
Interfaces for everything, abstract classes “just in case,” dependency injection frameworks that exist mainly to manage all the interfaces. Java (and often Enterprise C#) is all scaffolding built to appease the compiler and the ideology of “extensibility” before there’s any actual complexity to extend.
You can write clean, functional, concise Java today, especially with records, pattern matching, and lambdas, but the culture around the language was forged in a time when verbosity was king.