Lars Bak on language virtual machines

Lars Bak presents several language virtual machines (Self, Strongtalk, Hotspot), why they matter and how they influenced V8 and Dart.

I find it is a really interesting talk, especially since I follow his VM developments over the years (StrongTalk, OOVM, ... as you know from previous posts). And I agree with Lars who states: "I like Smalltalk"

Try to imagine if the software industry would have continued on the dynamic path in the 90's without getting the detour on static language ideas and VMs. Yes - Java and C# have momentum - but more because of marketing and commercial pressure, market pressure and since people believe in stupid TIOBE index. Better tools and IDEs makes them nowadays less painfull - but that just hides the fact that we need easily changeable and maintainable systems with meta facilities and true reflection that are easily scriptable and extendable.

We know we can do better in the software industry with dynamic languages and dynamic system. Dart is a move forward - but for me still not comparable to the most dynamic object system.
And it still comes with curly braces ;)