I have too written C++ for years---I worked on online game server frameworks---and you are partially right, C++98 is not for mere mortals, but we still tended to use only a part of C++11 and C++14 we saw fit. This is the point: not every new C++ feature is relevant to at least some of us, and the relevant fraction is ever diminishing.
Congratulations, you just proved that you know nothing about why a product succeeds/fails in the market.
It was the initial push (with gobs of money) given by Sun that gave Java the momentum. No language was ever pushed so hard in the marketplace by any other organization. Without that push, the language would never have the popularity that it enjoys today. There is nothing inherently "superior" to the Java language. Far better languages have fallen into obscurity because they did not get the publicity (eg. Eiffel) that Java did.
That is not how logic works. "Better languages with less marketing are less popular than Java" means that "marketing matters" and that "quality isn't everything", not that "only marketing matters".
That wasn't it; There was nothing revolutionary about it. It was the most hyped/marketed language in History[1]. Sun threw ungodly amounts of money to market it and make it what it is today. Invented as a "Embedded Systems" language, pushed as a Browser "Applet" language, moved to "Server App" language and settled as a "Enterprise App" language.
I think the fact that it eventually ended up as a server app language took everybody by surprise - Sun never saw it as anything like that at inception I'm sure.
Adding JDBC and later nio is probably what got it there the most.
Yes. It was originally meant to be used for interactive television. It then transitioned to the web and to cross platform GUI's. It then transitioned to servers.
