@tunnel I played Minecraft since Alpha, and have been turning to modded Minecraft pretty darn early. Never ever touched Bedrock version myself because it was not 'modded enough' to begin with. I love the freedom that the Java version gives me, even though performance sometimes is abysmal, especially in the heavier modpacks.

So my knowledge of Bedrock is nonexistant I'm afraid. Just that my cousins are playing it on their Switches, but I bet that's probably vanilla Minecraft.

For modding Minecraft you actually don't really have to hack up Minecraft code. You can choose to go for Fabric, or Forge, or uh.. the other thingies, Spigot? They're all modloaders which already takes care of the hacking part and provides hooks for modders to mod into. So it's a bit easier.

As result, there really are a _shitton_ of mods available for the Java version. Forge's most popular but Fabric is gaining territory as well and is a bit lighter on resources I've noticed. Some modders choose to release their mods for both, some are exclusively the one or other.

Spigot (If that still exists) is another way but I've left that scene (from when it was still Bukkit, iirc) a long time ago for Forge. Mind you, I don't make mods myself.

I did notice a performance improvement with the latest Minecraft, though. 1.12 had this one great modpack but it'd make our badass server whine. 1.14 I didn't play too much. 1.16 made my client whine. 1.18 ... is an improvement. Even loading up the game somehow doesn't take 10 minutes anymore but just around 1 minute or so. So I'd say Java is improving.