[hughjd]

Doesn't Groovy (https://groovy-lang.org) achieve much of this? I remember being taught with it at university for some time before they introduced Java. With Groovy you don't need the class or main method, and can have a program which is just `println "Hello world!"`.

[chrisseaton]

> achieve much of this

Well no, because that on-ramps you to Groovy, not Java.

[aaa_aaa]

Groovy is not Java.

[usrusr]

But it's a brilliant example of everything that could possibly go wrong if you blindly optimize for hello world

[cies]

Or you get jealous of the runtime errors the JS, Rails and Python teams have.

[speed_spread]

Or invent entirely new classes of errors with static type annotations that are actually utterly ignored.

[gkfasdfasdf]

Neither is the final sample presented in the article! But I think the point is that Groovy already exists and can run most Java programs as well.