Being around long enough, the meme writing Java in C++ just rubs me the wrong way for something that was already common several years before Gosling even thought of Oak.

As if C++, alongside Smalltalk, and all those enterprise object modelling methodologies and books, weren't to blame for the widespread of that way of programming.

When Java came into the scene, those C++ and Smalltalk developers (and enterprise architects) migrated to it, and kept doing what were already considered "best practices" by then.