Also not having used Java for decades I'll not comment on the state of their abstractions, but

IMO at the extreme being unable to shed the past means negatively hindering progress. I think modern Java versions show a budding shift in mentality

both reminds me of similar complaints against C++ (and with a sizeable amount of users wishing for an ABI break), and how weird it is to get both complaints like that and over the fact that so many shops are on ancient versions. They've moved slowly, but it doesn't seem like anything was slow enough for a lot of shops, which indicates they likely could've moved faster without changing which versions users would be at today.