I think that Guido probably has his plate full with the open revolt over the transition to version 3. Javascript is much closer to a halfway point to Lisp than

I think that Guido probably has his plate full with the open revolt over the transition to version 3. Javascript is much closer to a halfway point to Lisp than Java. I don't really see Java as being at all similar to Lisp... witness the 3-4 year (possibly longer) debacle trying to get closures into the language. Talk about banging a square rhinoceros into a round hole. Java's point of greatest similarity to C++ is undoubtedly Generics, which has all the syntactic disadvantages of C++ templates, but none of the meta-programming advantages. But one of the ways of seeing that C++ and Java are quite dissimilar is to first grok Java Interfaces, and then read through the smalltalk/C++ version of the GoF book Design Patterns, with a view to how many of the Patterns don't even make sense in Java or are obsolete in Java because of Interfaces.