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# No separation of specification from implementation. Java classes aren't divided into specification and implementation parts. Hosch feels that this is an important point for beginners and would like ``this distinction between specification and implementation to be supported by the syntactic structure of the language.'' Lacking such a separation, he would at least like to be able to write prototypes for methods, which Java doesn't allow except within an abstract class or interface.

# No preconditions and postconditions. Hosch's introductory course emphasizes preconditions and postconditions, for which he would like language support. Java, like most languages, has no such support. (Among major languages, only Eiffel does.)

# Visibility rules are ``baroque.'' Hosch decries the many types of visibility in Java. He also laments that Java's syntactic support for hierarchical packages doesn't carry any semantic significance.

# No support for genericity. Hosch notes Java's lack of support for writing generic data structures and methods. As a substitute, he would accept ``type by association,'' such as Eiffel's anchored types.

# No enumeration types. Java lacks enumeration types entirely, although they can be simulated by creating a series of named constants.

# No local constants. In Java, variables that belong to a class can be made constant by declaring them to be final. Variables that are local to a method cannot be declared final, however.

# Exceptions not caught within a method must be declared as thrown by that method. Hosch finds this requirement to be onerous: ``for introductory students, it's a sequence of ugly, unintelligible syntactic marks.''