What do you C++ programmers think about the recent take over of much of the educational and Computer Science Feild by Java, I mean really its not much different, the two are very similar in many aspects. However, there are a few differences that one must be aware of. My main reason for posting this is, one of my fellow classmates seems to be under the impression that C++ is going to slowly die off thanks to Java, but I have to disagree, I think C++ still has a place in the programming world.

You are comparing apples and oranges here.. Java and C++ are very different things (there is more to programming languages than syntax!) and one cannot possibly replace the other.

Java is popular in schools, because of it is more strictly object-oriented (although not 100%) and is much neater than C++ (which is just a dirty hack on top of C really). This clarity and simplicity makes it easier to get OO concepts through to these dumb-as-brick students. Not to mention that it's free and Sun is very popular in universities..

Java is also cross-platform, so you don't have to worry about all kinds of OS- or hardware- specific problems (another distraction from the main purpose of teaching programming). The student can write and run her little "hello world" program on any computer capable of running Java.

Tell that to my classmate, lol, for some reason he has got it in his head that Java can be applied to all the various applications that C++ is implemented in and do it better...

Apperantly he has read some bogus web article about it, I will have to ask him where he found it.

Whilst I agree with Nodsu, I have to (mostly) agree with your classmate. Java is able to do most things that C++ does, and often in an easier way than C++ does it...

But I'm not so sure about "better". But that word depends on what your goals/req's are.