Why

• the java programming language is a good foundation for many projects

• • Type-safety
  • • Avoids many typical bugs, crashes, security problems
    • More opportunities for optimizing compilers
  • Modular, object-oriented, concurrent, dynamic
  • Easier to write structured, portable code
  • Very rich library, reasonably well designed (mostly)
  • Large developer base (“COBOL of the 1990’ies”)
  • • There exist lots of other good (even better?) languages: Oberon, Eiffel, O’Caml, Haskell, Mercury, Erlang, TOM, Cedar, ...
    • But: They have not many free applications/libraries