Mid 2000s in my experience. And not because it was safe from memory bugs so much as safe from memory leaks. Still had plenty of NPEs.

Safer, I'd say, but it also introduced its own issues. Its type system and - maybe more importantly - its ecosystem around things like unit testing and static analysis at the time was a few leaps ahead of C++, making it a favorite for enterprise systems and codebases where getting 5 SIG stars is a badge of honor and/or requirement.

Java is easier than C++ as well, harder to mess things up. That said, Go feels easier again than Java because it got rid of a lot of cruft.