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Personally, I look forward to better tools for analyzing C++ source code.

I do as much debugging as possible on the Mac, but I occasionally must debug problems in the PC world, which is significantly slower.

No matter what, the way to learn to program is to write code and rewrite it and see it used and rewrite again. Reading other people's code is invaluable as well.

The most frequent complaint is that it's hard. True. it's a hard game to win Also, many people ask me how to use the secret debugging commands, apparently under the impression that I'll tell them.

My list of basic tools is a partial answer to the question about what has changed: Over the past few years, large numbers of programmers have come to depend on elaborate tools to interface code with systems facilities.

What's kept Java from being used as widely as possible is there hasn't been an Open Source implementation of it that's gotten really widespread use.

I found out that most programmers don't like to test their software as intensely as I do.

Writing software that's safe even in the presence of bugs makes the challenge even more interesting.

This evolution may compromise Java's claim of being simpler than C++, but my guess is that the effort will make Java a better language than it is today.

If you write your own tools, you can sort of see new things, design new things.