Anti-C++ Hipsters

People who hate C++ are only doing so because it's hip and cool to hate on something that seems too complex at first glance. You want to be seen as cool and edgy, as someone who goes against the grain, when in reality you're just another annoying undergraduate that will probably have a hard time finding a job in the field.

C++ is not perfect, but no language is. Get over it.

>>64
a scripting language isn't going to magically turn 100k line project into 3k lines of code. that type of reduction is not possible, unless the project was coded in an especially asinine way.

I have seen very little written in Java that wasn't written in an especially asinine way. 97% reduction isn't realistic, but over 50% is, with the way I've seen Java written. I'm talking about shit like this, which can be found in Sun's own code: http://harmful.cat-v.org/Blog/2009/08/05/0-java-factory/

Scripting languages make this code look as dumb as it is. Java dresses it up and enshrines it.

I also think you are overestimating how important the type system is. Many of its strengths make up for its own weaknesses. You don't need your IDE to "refactor" a class name-change in 100 different files in Python (for instance) simply because in Python you aren't tagging things with class names all over the place. (Duck-typing is a great way to decouple things, and it's basically what Java interfaces aim to do, but without having to make 1 or 2 new files every time you write a new class.)

Really, the biggest advantage of Java is that you can do nothing and pretend to yourself or others that you're being productive.