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I was reading in the side bar of the Java language wiki page and it says it was influenced by Pascal and Delphi. this isn't the fact anymore, there are no references to Delphi on the entire referenced wiki page as of this edit, probably should remove all references to Delph from this question as well

At first glance Java appears to just be C++ with a garbage collector, and no pointers. Delphi and Java both came out the same year.

I am curious if someone who knows Java and Pascal / Delphi really well could look at Java and say "Feature X in Java is influenced by feature Y in Pascal (or Delphi)."

Additionally was the influence in later versions of Java (so the feature from Pascal or Delphi didn't show up until Java version Z), or was it actually in the seeds of the Java language? Delphi and Java both came out the same year, so Delphi's influence in the genesis of Java seems less likely.

Alternatively it may be that Delphi or Pascal influenced the Java Platform in some other way, and not the language specifically.

[This was rewritten to be clearer. That may have changed the scope of the question to the point the existing comments and answers don't fit. My intention was to clarify and not change.]

Jim McKeeth
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One definitive influence on java was the idea and use of p-Code (pseudo-code) in the Pascal package from UCSD. It was popular in the early days of the Apple-II computer.

This idea of p-Code is very similar to that of Java.

el mugroso
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Yes, according to http://www.levenez.com/lang/ (and other sites I'm too lazy to list) Java has a distant relationship with Pascal through the chain: Pascal -> Mesa -> Cedar -> Oak/Java. This same site shows a more recent influence into Java from C#, which has its own lineage going back to Pascal -> Turbo Pascal -> Delphi through its architect Anders Hejlsberg.

Just do a google search for "lineage of programming languages" and browse til you can't stand looking at huge linage charts any more. ;)

John Gaines Jr.
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Contrary to popular folklore, Java was strongly influenced by Objective-C and not C++. This is a usenet post by one of the people working on the Oak project that became Java. He explains that Oak had a number of people who'd come to Sun from NeXT, and that key early decisions in Java's design like single inheritance, multiple interfaces and supporting both primitives and object-type number vales came from ObjC.

Notice that the conversation also describes just how far removed the principles of Modula-3 - and by association Pascal - are from Java.