I looked at Java in late 1995 – 1996. I had this terrible book that promised to teach java in a half hour. I had this other terrible book that was Java for C Programmers. In short, I didn’t have a very good intro to the language. I think the first decent book I used was O’Reilly Java in a Nutshell. The Java language has never appealed to me. I like that it was garbage collected but the language was too overly verbose for my liking. With CPlusPlus I was more succinct and the RAII idiom appeared more useful to me than GC. I’m starting to have second thoughts. I think the language is still bloody awful though it is getting better. Java 1.5 and the support for Generics are a step in the right direction. The impressive part about Java is the community that has formed around it. Trying to install a 3rd-party CPlusPlus library can often be a nightmare. The same thing cannot be said for 3rd-part Java libraries. I think this has helped the Java community to flourish. The Java community has also built tools around the Java language flaws. Eclipse and AspectJ are just two of the many great tools I’ve heard about. I want to spend more time exploring the Java environment. I think the Java environment rocks compared to the Java language which kinda sucks. My goal is to spend time looking at the various Java scripting languages e.g. Jython, JRuby, Groovy, Nice, Kawa, SISC. I’m also going to look at developments tools e.g. Eclipse, AspectJ, Hyades, JUnit, Ant. I see great potential in the various artifacts that have appeared in the Java environment.