As a student most of the way through a Java course, I'm wondering what Java is still used for. Java applets are dead, Android is moving on to Kotlin (apparently Google got in legal trouble with Oracle even though Java is "open source?"), and I can't think of any desktop applications that use Java anymore. Java is supposed to be able to "run anywhere," yet C++ is more portable because it doesn't require the JVM to run.

Yet clearly I'm mistaken, since Java is still one of the most popular languages.

Edit: also please help me understand - do I have to pay for a license even though Java is open source? Is this normal for other languages too?

Here at Quobyte, we're developing a distributed file system that is partially written in Java. The JVM is rock-stable, fast, and developers are very productive in Java.

I am also working on a networked file system solution. My approach is likely fundamentally different. Instead of a single file system to represent file system artifacts across various devices I am using a single simplified data model as an abstraction for all file systems and pairing that with a new security/identity scheme. The idea is to solving for file asset distribution using point-to-point solutions that don't compromise security or privacy.

https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems

I suspect your approach is likely far more stable as I am still working out the kinks in my models, but I supply a complete GUI in the browser that works the same in all browsers on all modern OSs.