On Bruce Eckel's 'Thinking in Java'(4th edition), continued

I'm quite shocked at Eckel's honesty in the introductory pages. I mean, he's not trying to sell Java to you like most books do. He talks about pros and not so much about the cons, sure, but he mentions python at least twice. On the very first page of the preface, he writes

And yet, of all programming languages of which I am aware, almost none have gone all out and and decided that their main design goal would be to conquer the complexity of developing and maintaining programs.

which then points to the footnote

However, I believe that the python language comes close to doing exactly that.

Later in the preface he thanks python and some python developers, most notably writing

I use python constantly to solve problems

And at the end, he even mentions, gasp, C#

We're all indebted to the brilliance of Anders Hejlsberg, who continues to toil away at C# (which as you'll learn in this book, was a major inspiration for Java SE5)

I find this kind of blatant open-minded-ness refreshing and above all healthy. It is the primary ingredient of an ever-improving mind.