> Counter point, ... downcasting is rarely needed. Dunno if that's a counterpoint. I'll agree everything you said there. I was saying Java uses the downcast in

> Counter point, ... downcasting is rarely needed. Dunno if that's a counterpoint. I'll agree everything you said there. I was saying Java uses the downcast in a lot of situations that C++ doesn't. And it uses downcast to achieve features that are not there or not as developed in the C++ ecosystem. It looks like C++ is ready to catch up, but these things need to percolate through the library ecosystem over time. > C++ prefers to do its metaprogramming at compile time. Terminology is a little muddled here, but I was talking about both compile time and run time metaprogramming. C++ has little support for either while Java has a pretty robust system for each. Java has things like JMX, JMS, and JDBC Template as standard things while C++ has at best a hodge-podge of things that don't necessarily play nice with each other.