Java, the good, the bad and the ugly

This paper describes some of the experience gained over the last two years in teaching Java to both second level undergraduates in an Object-Oriented Specialism and to first year Computing undergraduates as a first programming language, and also in the use of Java both in student project work and in the development of an industrial strength graphics application involving in excess of 100 K lines of code.These experiences have brought to light a number of good as well as bad features of the language and in addition a number of language features which whilst not bad or dangerous, form an unnecessary barrier to understanding.Finally, the paper draws some conclusions from the lessons learnt regarding the appropriateness of the choice of Java in preference to other candidates such as Smalltalk and C++ in these two domains of application.