Programming languages come and go, and Java is surely not be the exception. But Java has brought tremendous value to software development as a whole. As this post by Bruce Eckel points out 'Java brought the mainstream of programmers into the world of garbage collection, virtual machines and a consistent error handling model' Read Bruce's entire post on the topic entitled 'The Positive Legacy of C++ and Java': http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=252441