Comment by shevy-java
7 hours ago
I'd include both approaches.
The thing is that the "scripting" approach, is just so much easier to distribute. Just look at how popular python got. Smalltalk didn't understand that. The syntax is worse than python IMO (and also ruby of course).
Once I asked James Gosling what Java did right that Smalltalk did wrong. He simply answered “Smalltalk never played well with others”.
Imposing a very different metaphor from the ground up limited adoption and integration with other tools and environments.
Let's remember: Java was free-as-in-beer.