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Comment by rlander | Hacker News Reader

> sunk into improving the JVM weren't instead spent improving an open-source SmallTalk instead.

Well, one of the cornerstone technologies of the JVM, HotSpot, was actually developed for a Smalltalk implementation, Strongtalk, and later adapted for Java.

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... and then some of that same team went on to do the compiler used by node, and Chrome (V8).

Modern JavaScript has many Smalltalk features.. [starts putting on flame retardant suit].

The best parts of JavaScript are where the Lisp and Smalltalk heritage is apparent.

The worst parts are where a PHB told Brandon Eich "we're going to call it Javascript, make it more like Java", and where the PHB told him "I don't care if it's done, we need to ship it".

Given the object model, I would add another Smalltalk descendent into the mix: Self http://www.selflanguage.org

Self was definitely an influence. It's where the prototype inheritance came from. Not sure that's a good thing. Smalltalk was more traditional in its inheritance model even if it was all duck typing.

For UI, prototype inheritance was nicer on the Newton (NewtonScript) than on the several of the class-based stuff I played with[1]. Morphic include in Pharo / Squeak is based on Self's UI. I actually like a prototype (other than performance issues) more than class-based. It has a much nicer, lighter feel for me. I just don't think Javascript is the best at it. I loved programming NewtonScript other than its clunky syntax in places. NeXTSTEP got around a lot of crappy class-based behavior by having live objects.

1) I swear I still have nightmares that include OnOk

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