[shellac]

> It turns out the reason static typing seemed like a pain at the time is because we didn't have good tools.

Java IDEs were certainly highlighting errors, auto-completing, refactoring etc in 2008. Admittedly IntelliJ (the most impressive one) didn't have a free version then.

[howinteresting]

The problem with Java is that it is the most OOP language to ever exist, and OOP is an incoherent way to write production systems. Oh you've overridden a method in a subclass, ok. Who is responsible for calling whom? Which methods get to enforce invariants and which methods get to assume them? Documentation is an insufficient answer.

[maccard]

Eclipse was available and free long before 2008. C++ had had visual studio, as has c# for longer than that too.

[kentonv]

Yes, but outside of Java developers a lot of people didn't understand the power of this yet.