[dahauns]

I think Java was the main one. C/C++ are (relatively) close to the metal, system-level languages with explicit memory management - and were tacitly accepted to be the "complicated" ones, with dynamic typing not really applicable at that level.

But Java was the high-level, GCed, application development language - and more importantly, it was the one dominating many university CS studies as an education language before python took that role. (Yeah, I'm grossly oversimplifying - sincere apologies to the functional crowd! :) )

The height of the "static typing sucks!" craze was more like a "The Java type system sucks!" craze...

[mixmastamyk]

For me it was more the “java can’t easily process strings” craze that made it impractical to use for scripts or small to medium projects.

Not to mention boilerplate BS.

Recently, Java has improved a lot on these fronts. Too bad it’s twenty-five years late.