I'm someone who wrote a lot of 'raw' Java and C++ without frameworks, which meant there was a lot less boilerplate and indirection etc. And for me, the big usability boon came about 10 years ago, around the same time for both Java and C++, when they started supporting lambda functions. I started passing code into algorithms and, although it sounds quite complicated, it simplified my programs substantially. Before that syntactic sugar gave the affordance I hadn't been organising my programs that way.

For the longest time Java had been very keen to be explicit, to the point of needing a log of cruft where it just felt like the compiler was checking you spelt every letter of the incantation correctly because both the compiler and you knew unambiguously what simple thing you were trying to achieve. But this tone changed in Java around the time the new entrants like Kotlin started taking over as what you develop in in a way that scala and clojure never managed. And suddenly all the get-out-of-your-way of lambdas saving you typing out classes and anonymous classes arrived and Java became a much nicer experience imo.

Yeah, as someone with a background in FP, I found anonymous Runnable classes quite awkward.

Now if we could just wean some more of the ecosystem away from the framework fetishism... there's no reason java programs have to be so huge, unwieldy and slow to start.

No reason apart from the framework epidemic that's supposed to make things easier for developers, but in the end hamstrings them and weighs everything down.

(to the downvoters - I am a java developer and this is very real to me at the moment!)