[amitamit]

I was at Sun Labs at that time - Ousterhout's group was internally regarded as one of the top groups there. I was in a different group.

My recollection is that the concerns were not around technical merit: a. Tcl and Java were positioned as competitors, b. Sun saw Java as a critical weapon in its fight against Microsoft, c. Java won the internal battle, which led to Tcl/Scriptics spin out.

[kevin_thibedeau]

In the 90's Java did have technical merit because the Tcl of that era didn't have a bytecode interpreter. It wouldn't have been practical for the sort of low level embedded devices Sun was aiming to support with Java processors. The resources needed for dynamism is also a handicap for such platforms.