Simple

The language is supposed to be easy to learn and easy to use, both for experienced and novice programmers.

Hype

We wanted to build a system that could be programmed easily without a lot of esoteric training and which leveraged today's standard practice. Most programmers working these days use C, and most programmers doing object-oriented programming use C++. So even though we found that C++ was unsuitable, we designed Java as closely to C++ as possible in order to make the system more comprehensible.

--The Java Language, an Overview, a Sun white paper, available at http://www.javasoft.com/doc/Overviews/java/java-overview-1.html as of 3/9/97.

Reality

Java is relatively simple, especially compared to overly complex languages like C++. Java is easy to learn as both a first time programmer and as an experienced programmer. In fact it's one of the cleanest languages I've ever seen.

Bottom Line: A

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