I think you hit the nail on the head... it's always been the "enterprise" apps that bugged me about Java. Java may be entirely capable.. but, for example getting an application setup in Eclipse + Java has always just seemed painful to me.. I mean an existing app. Ant + Tomcat + X + actually getting a working debugging session.

VS has usually been get latest from source control.. open sln and click debug... wait for ever it seems like for enterprise code.

Probably why I've been so taken/enamored with nodejs lately. For the most part it's not enterprise platforms... it's well tested, small modules put together like lego blocks stacked together. Event streams and pipes are awesome.

It is sometimes surprising how many deeply nested versions of npm modules are in other modules.. it's still better than having to dig through a dozen projects to update a common dependency they all share.

Java and C# will be around for a very long time, cobol is still pretty widely used... that doesn't mean I want to green field something in it.

Also, Gulp (or even Grunt) with npm is far less friction than anything I've seen in the Java space.. and nuget (.net) doesn't really compare well.