I'm confused a little bit as to your grouping of Java and C++ in the same tier of OO languages. I'm not a Java expert, but am I correct in assuming that the only non-OO aspect of Java in that definition is its continuance of primitive data types? I can't recite all of the classes in the the Java 2 API, but I haven't come across anything yet that cna't be extended or subclassed or introspected... All in all, I agree with your posts here wholly, except that I would break up that tier and put Java a little higher, as it is possible to write purely procedural C++, which is just not an option in Java.