Where does that come from? People who have only ever used Java or C#? I mean, there's nothing conceptually about VMs or strong typing that would lead to such a conclusion?
- started coding after Java and .NET became mainstream
- only know C and C++ as compiled languages, never tried anything else (e.g. Modula-2, Delphi, Haskell, ...)
- lack CS background
So they think any language with stronger type system than C or C++ can only be provided via a VM based runtime.