SIsitkack·Apr 13, 2023
Eich is a smart man, and already had experience with Scheme at the time. A subset of Java with a fast interpreter would have been much preferable. Lots of great small languages existed. It makes for a great heroic story, but really it should one of a smart person making a hasty design that basically sht on the future.
One of the inspirations for Java was the language "Bob" by David Betz
https://github.com/dbetz/bob
Even it would have been a win over JS.
https://github.com/dbetz/bob
@Article{Betz:1991:YOT,
author = "David Betz",
title = "Your own tiny object-oriented language",
journal = j-DDJ,
volume = "16",
type = "PL",
number = "9",
pages = "26, 28, 30, 32--33, 86, 88--89",
month = sep,
year = "1991",
CODEN = "DDJOEB",
ISSN
Read the rest
= "1044-789X",
bibdate = "Tue Sep 10 09:11:02 MDT 1996",
bibsource = "http://www.ddj.com/index/author/index.htm;
http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/dr-dobbs-1990.bib",
note = "Reprinted in \cite{Betz:1994:YOT}.",
acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
classification = "C6140D (High level languages); C6150C (Compilers,
interpreters and other processors)",
keywords = "Bob; C++; C-like syntax; Class system; Interpreter;
Lisp; Tiny object-oriented language",
thesaurus = "C listings; High level languages; Object-oriented
programming; Program interpreters",
}
http://www.txbobsc.com/misc/bob-article/bob-article.html
It shouldn't be excused. Every feature is the potential for an equal or larger detractor.