I’ve seen the same explanation used for why static and functional languages took off more in Europe while dynamic and object oriented languages took off more in America: American research labs could afford more expensive computers that could handle more runtime overhead. The shining example of this being Xerox PARC with their Alto computer specifically designed to run Smalltalk like a computer from 10 years in the future.

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aleph_minus_one 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

An interesting consideration, but don't functional languages have overhead, too?

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sampullman 4 hours ago | parent [-]

A compiled functional language doesn't (have to) have much overhead compared to a dynamic language with a fancy runtime.

	▲	SoftTalker 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The same could be said of a compiled OO language though couldn't it?

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Qem 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Interesting observation. Never noticed that.