I do not think this is an original thought.
But it seems to me that javascript (and the ecosystem around it including typescript and node) has evolved to fulfill Java's original promise better than Java ever did.
In the introduction of the whitepaper "The Java Language Environment" [link] , written by James Gosling and Henry McGilton in 1996 ( the same year as the introduction of Java 1.0), Java is marketed with the following section
The Better Way is Here Now
Now there is a better way -- the Java TM programming language platform from Sun Microsystems. Imagine, if you will, this development world...
- Your programming language is object oriented, yet it's still dead simple.
- Your development cycle is much faster because Java technology is interpreted. The compile-link-load-test-crash-debug cycle is obsolete--now you just compile and run.
- Your applications are portable across multiple platforms. Write your applications once, and you never need to port them--they will run without modification on multiple operating systems and hardware architectures.
- Your applications are robust because the Java runtime environment manages memory for you.
- Your interactive graphical applications have high performance because multiple concurrent threads of activity in your application are supported by the multithreading built into the Java programming language and runtime platform.
- adaptable