If you actually understand Java, you'll understand why this is wrong. Only newbies have confusion about this, most of which dissipates when you actually learn the language you're working with. Tired of this 20+ year old "flaw" being used as cannon fodder.
In practice, how often are you interested in it? C# has `Object.referenceEquals()` because you _may_ want this sometimes. But to have reference equality be the default for something like `==` is a design flaw. Not one that can be fixed now, of course, but it will continue to cause bugs for years to come.
Dunno, I do a fair bit of low level java work, happens every once in a while.
Curiously, I don't do a lot of value-comparisons. Based on grepping in the repo for my search engine, I appear to do one every 1000 lines of code. May just be how I write code though. Some people seem to do that a lot more.
Python uses the `is` operator, which is semantically much more explicit (and arguably correct, though C#'s use of the `is` operator is probably more correct).
Look, languages are moving away from permitting constructs like "if (x = 1)" because it's difficult to distinguish from "if (x == 1)". Adding "if (x === 1)" into the mix is arguably a step backwards in terms of clarity.
This is like saying that null references are a non-issue because it have been there since the 1970s and that "true" $LANGUAGE developers never collide head-first into invalid dereferences. If something is ridiculous and un-ergonomic, it stays ridiculous and un-ergonomic no matter what. Reference comparison by default is ridiculous and un-ergonomic.
Null references exist in every language with the concept of null. It has nothing to do with Java specifically, and Java gives you a lot of information to debug them.
