Q: This question is for people with both C++ and Java experience. Do you believe there are features of Java that C++ could also have, and would benefit from? My opinion: Typically when Java is praised in the presence of C++ programmers the person extolling any virtue of Java is ridiculed and insinuations about his or her intelligence and abilities are leveled against the person. I believe I am now in a position to speak with some authority regarding the two languages. I may not be one of the leading experts in either language, but I can program effectively in both of them. I firmly believe Java has certain features that make it easier to use, and faster to program in. Among those is a superior mechanism for locating and integrating libraries. In Java the `#include' and `using' declaration (or directive - but I don't do that) are united in the `import' statement. The 'interface' provided by a 'header' file and the 'object' code provided by *.o, *.a, *.la, etc., are combined into a single *.class file. The file is easily located by leveraging the most ubiquitous data storage and retrieval mechanisms in computing; the file system. In the C++ Standard ISO/IEC 14882:2003 there is no formal concept of a header file. All use of header files is by convention, and is based on the ancient artifact inherited from C called the C preprocessor. I know of no fundamental reason why C++ cannot use a mechanism similar to that of Java (and C#, BTW) for locating and importing resources. That one facility would probably increase my productivity to twice what it currently is, simply by freeing me of the task of maintaining mapping identifiers to external resources which often have no direct naming similarity, much less a deterministic relationsip between identifier name and file name. -- Regards, Steven