I don't know what Gosling's actual influences were, but when Java came out I was struck by its similarity in many respects to Modula-3. One convention I wish t

I don't know what Gosling's actual influences were, but when Java came out I was struck by its similarity in many respects to Modula-3. One convention I wish they had borrowed was modules instead of classes as the encapsulation technique, although I think many potential converts to the language would have found Modula-3's partial revelation of types to be confusing. We live in a wonderfully polyglot world these days. At the time Java was introduced, I felt like new programmers encouraged each other to pick sides. Were you going to use C? Pascal? C++? (Visual) Basic? Ada? Lisp? Your "choice" brought you praise from one camp and ridicule from another.