You will never get fluent in Java if you think Python code is a
reasonable specification for your Java code.
I did C++ and TCL before I did Python. I did Perl and Java before that. And
C before that.
I am as fluent in Java as I want to be—the main learning curve right now is
the Android APIs. The day I can rely on most Android devices to have a
Python implementation built-in, guess what I’ll be doing...
I do not think that you will be happy with Java if your main criterion
for good code is short code.
My criterion is not short code, but MAINTAINABLE code. Data-driven code is
best: then you can usually make changes just to data tables, with minimal
need to change any actual code. This needs a language that can easily
construct elaborate data structures, preferably with a functional notation.
That Python example I posted illustrates this: it needs to pull out a long
list of fields from one table. But any change to that list of fields only
needs to be made in one place; all the rest of the code for constructing the
query and formatting the output will automatically adjust to that.