The author doesn't seem to be that experienced yet and the arguments/comparisons don't seem so strong IMO. If they say they were hyped about something like Elixir/Haskell but now they are all in for Java, then OK, there might be a quite interesting story to tell. But coming from TypeScript as a backend language to Java as a backend language?... Come on. This is as much of a no-brainer as it can get. It by no means implies Java is any good compared to many other options out there, but is more a testament of how much of a way the JS ecosystem still has to go.
I totally agree that Java is not bad (also chatted with some friends about IntelliJ etc.), but as many have pointed out, it simply has a lot of weird tradeoffs that are already baked into the language. I always say that maybe in a few years I'd just say screw it and go write Java for a big corp. But for now I'd still like to enjoy writing Elixir with similar-minded folks as much as I can. Nothing compares to it in terms of developer experience yet. Maybe it's a form of meaningless stubbornness/resistance idk.