In explaining the various reasons why completion is taking as long as it has, he points out that Java(tm) has become increasingly complex:
Another way to look at it is to say that J2SE5 has made me realize how complex Java has become. It's been sneaking along with the various releases, but J2SE5 (clearly driven by the features in C# 2.0) has leapt forward far enough that you suddenly wake up and say "hey, this isn't a 'simple' language anymore!" (Many will argue that it never was).
For example, I've come to understand that to teach Java now requires a two-week seminar, whereas before I could fit things into a single week. This change has been long in coming, but it was hard for me to break out of a one-week seminar format. It always seemed like a programming language should be acquirable in a single week. It took a customer saying "we just want the basics" for me to (A) figure out what the basics were (in this case, as in many, just enough Java to be able to write servlets and JSPs, and talk to JDBC -- that is, enough to write basic web server applications) and (B) discover that learning Java didn't have to be a painful process for all concerned. Trying to cram too much into too short a time is agonizing for everyone, but like the proverbial frog in the slowly-heating saucepan, the features that were incrementally added to the language always seemed like they could be shoehorned in. It took time and pain to discover that we had passed the point of a one-week seminar.
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