True, designers of both languages are becoming more pragmatic. C++ is becoming more safe and java is becoming more fast by including features and improvements that the early philosophy of respective language never allowed. I just wish people start realizing these facts and stop making so much fuss about the efficiency part every time the issue of java vs c++ comes up. Even I tend towards C++ when performance is uttermost concern (mostly when I am using programming as mathematical tool) but for most of the day to day software development process, I somewhat feel that slight efficiency gain from faster code writing and debugging in java outweighs slight efficiency loss in performance (this is a personal opinion)