Hi again

because Java is lovely, well thought out language, I do admit that the implementation is a little dodgy ;)....

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in that case I might as well use VB or even C# (yyyyyak!).

now you are being silly ;)..

OK I am being silly, I mean VB .NET ;o)

yep, I'll give you some of those, although I might argue that "Faster, More robust, reducing programmer effort" depends greatly on the programmer...

And since I am the programmer in question the point still stands!! No seriously, actually writing effective generic templates often takes longer than writing 400 very similar classes.

c++ is actually very nasty in a OO sense.. it is C with object orientation and loads of other 'usefull' things bolted on.. pure C is nice, C++ is not imho ;)..

Modern C++ (as opposed to Classic/Common C++) is not C extended, it is not a superset of C, it is a separate, albeit related language. Give me well written modern C++ anytime. (though I do love C, I take this view because I actually learned C++ b4 C and found that way around that C seems very 'limited').

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No runtime stuff required... compile and run...done. (ok so you have to compile for each platform but at least you don't need a massive installation of an SDK/JRE just to write your code and test it).

yep, I agree with that....although there are some issues involved with porting code (32->64 bits, different memory architectures for example).. Java just works in these instances..

True.

but how do you know you are in the real world right now ? you might be inhabiting a virtual mnachine in somebody's mind as we speak ;)..

I am actually inhabiting a solar system that is in fact a carbon compound molecule in someone's kitchen table in a parallel and infinitely larger (though relatively equal sized) universe.

aahh step over to the greener side of the grass, I've been using Java/C++ for 7 years now, and for what I do (network programming/console based apps) Java is very cute. Once thing I will say here.. Java and GUI do not mix well.. I can't stand Java GUI's, they are a pig to get right, and each architecture handles them differently.. definatly C/C++ for gui's ;)..

Yep, geve up trying to get swing components to look good after a couple of weeks and used C++ builder instead. cheers Earl