[samatman]

I was around at the time.

Java's object semantics are explicitly intended as a streamlining of C++, the keywords are the same for the most part, and it was sold as a C++ which runs anywhere with no memory leaks.

Note that I mentioned the semantics: the object semantics of Java and C++ are so similar as to have corrupted the entire concept of objects in their favor.

This wasn't an accident, and it wasn't malice, it just feels like it sometimes.

[gpderetta]

I'm not a Java programmer but as far as I can tell java object semantics, far from being corrupted, do indeed come from simula via c++.

Thanks to reflection and a featureful VM, Java does have a significant amount of dynamic behaviour that can be used to implement a lot of features of the smalltalk side of the OO family tree.