>That might explain its complicated syntax. Not at all. The syntax was modelled after C++ which was what SUN wanted Java to replace at the time (generally it i

>That might explain its complicated syntax. Not at all. The syntax was modelled after C++ which was what SUN wanted Java to replace at the time (generally it is a C-family style syntax). Smalltalk itself has better syntax than any of the bunch. >Better than obj-c but worse than nice languages like Ruby or Python. Ruby and Python are not statically typed languages, which covers a lot of the simplicity in their syntaxes. And while they did exist at the time, they were far from anybody's attention at the time Java emerged. It took 3-5 years after that for Python to make a strong appearance in some circles, and another 3-5 years for Ruby to emerge.