If you’ve been using Java for a while, you will have encountered the need to start an external process. So you use Runtime.getRuntime().exec(...) … and you’re stuck. You can’t set the current directory for the new process, change the environment, etc. And you’ll also have to handle deadlocks.
Bad Java. Down. So Martin Buchholz came up with ProcessBuilder. I’ll use this API to explain my concept of “Angst API”. An Angst API is an API which keeps you afraid. You use it and there is the constant feeling that something might break. The default case (which should work out of the box) is in fact the most hard to make work right.
If you know a bit about processes, you know how easy it is to get a deadlock when one is reading from the other: Process 1 is trying to write some more data to process 2 which is waiting for process 1 to read the data is has sent back a few moments ago. Deadlock.
To avoid this, you need to wrap the output streams (from which your process is reading) in a thread. This is the default case. In the special case, when you know that the processes won’t exchange any data, you don’t need this but in the common case, you do. This is what is broken with the ProcessBuilder API: It makes the special case (no data exchange) simple and the common case hard. It even tries its best to make a fix hard: All classes involved are final, private, the “no trespassing” style.
Which is the other side of the Angst API: We don’t want to bloat the Java runtime, we are afraid that some user might reuse our code, we are afraid that the performance could suffer, we are afraid that error handling is more complex if we start a background thread (one thread would be enough to process the outputs of all external processes).
When you design an API, don’t be afraid. Make it a nice API, one which you love to write, which users love to use and which welcomes them with open arms. No one likes the scary neighbor who waits for trespassers with a gun in his arms.
Dark Views 
Many are saying that Java is the most bug-infested program app.
Well, another problem with Angst APIs is that people are afraid to change them. While Java was great ten years ago, it didn’t move much in important places (where an API change might have caused some protest) while it changed a lot behind the scenes.