CS1 Course Site         Questions and Answers ( about Cognition and Computation ) Answer   Java's greatest affinities appear to be to C (and C + +),  to Smalltalk,  and to Lisp.   It is more regular than C (and C + +),  and less regular than both Smalltalk and Lisp.   In short,  Java is a carefully crafted mix of elements from these and other languages.