Why doesn't Java offer operator overloading?

Question

Coming from C++ to Java, the obvious unanswered question is why didn\'t Java include operator overloading?

Isn\'t Complex a, b, c; a = b + c; much simpl

Answer 1

James Gosling likened designing Java to the following:

"There's this principle about moving, when you move from one apartment to another apartment. An interesting experiment is to pack up your apartment and put everything in boxes, then move into the next apartment and not unpack anything until you need it. So you're making your first meal, and you're pulling something out of a box. Then after a month or so you've used that to pretty much figure out what things in your life you actually need, and then you take the rest of the stuff -- forget how much you like it or how cool it is -- and you just throw it away. It's amazing how that simplifies your life, and you can use that principle in all kinds of design issues: not do things just because they're cool or just because they're interesting."

You can read the context of the quote here

Basically operator overloading is great for a class that models some kind of point, currency or complex number. But after that you start running out of examples fast.

Another factor was the abuse of the feature in C++ by developers overloading operators like '&&', '||', the cast operators and of course 'new'. The complexity resulting from combining this with pass by value and exceptions is well covered in the Exceptional C++ book.