[repelsteeltje]

I suppose it's somewhat accurate to claim that Haskell and Ocaml historically preceded Java (or even Objective-C). But Java wasn't inspired by those academic languages, but C: a then widely used real-world language with only partial static types.

(Not saying Java's attempt to remedy C's problems wasn't half-assed — it was.) The trend to plug holes is primarily motivated by empirical evidence of bug classes. Not by elegance of academic research.

As Bjarne Stroustrup famously quipped:

> “There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.”

Swift, Kotlin, Rust, C++ are attempt to become languages that everyone complains about, not Haskell or Ocaml.