[rauhl]

> But in the alternative timeline where Java was not created, Java (and other machine-independent runtimes) would have not have become popular, and everyone would still be statically compiling C++.

I don’t know if that’s actually true. Computers were getting more and more powerful in the 90s, and hence more capable of supporting memory-managed and dynamic languages. Had Java not existed, I think that there’d be a very good change that Smalltalk or Lisp would have taken off instead. Indeed, looking at the late 90s, I think that there’s a good chance that the world would have gone with Smalltalk, and the computing industry would actually be light years ahead of where we are now.