Just my opinion of course, but:

> What's the matter with this?

To me what makes this very "Java" is the arguments being passed, and all the OOP stuff that isn't providing any benefit and isn't really modeling real-world-ish objects (which IMHO is where OOP shines). .version(Version.HTTP_1_1) and .followRedirects(Redirect.NORMAL) I can sort of accept, but it requires knowing what class and value to pass, which is lookups/documentation reference. These are spread out over a bunch of classes. But we start getting so "Java" with the next ones. .connectTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(20)) (why can't I just pass 20 or 20_000 or something? Do we really need another class and method here?) .proxy(ProxySelector.of(new InetSocketAddress("proxy.example.com", 80))), geez that's complex. .authenticator(Authenticator.getDefault()), why not just pass bearer token or something? Now I have to look up this Authenticator class, initialize it, figure out where it's getting the credentials, how it's inserting them, how I put the credentials in the right place, etc. The important details are hidden/obscured behind needless abstraction layers IMHO.

I think Java is a good language, but most modern Java patterns can get ludicrous with the abstractions. When I was writing lots of Java, I was constantly setting up an ncat listener to hit so I could see what it's actually writing, and then have to hunt down where a certain thing is being done and figuring out the right way to get it to behave correctly. Contrast with a typical Typescript HTTP request and you can mostly tell just from reading the snippet what the actual HTTP request is going to look like.

> but it requires knowing what class and value to pass

Unless you use a text editor without any coding capabilities, your IDE should show you which values you can pass. The alternative is to have more methods, I guess?

> why can't I just pass 20 or 20_000 or something

20 what? Milliseconds? Seconds? Minutes? While I wouldn't write the full Duration.ofSeconds(20) (you can save the "Duration."), I don't understand how one could prefer a version that makes you guess the unit.

> proxy(ProxySelector.of(new InetSocketAddress("proxy.example.com", 80))), geez that's complex

Yes it is, can't add anything here. There's a tradeoff between "do the simple thing" and "make all things possible", and Java chooses the second here.

> .authenticator(Authenticator.getDefault()), why not just pass bearer token or something?

Because this Authenticator is meant for prompting a user interactively. I concur that this is very confusing, but if you want a Bearer token, just set the header.

> why can't I just pass 20 or 20_000 or something? Do we really need another class and method here?

If you've ever dealt with time, you'll be grateful it's a duration and not some random int.