D vs VM-based platforms

[Walter Bright]

Don Clugston wrote:
> Java had a VM so it could run on SPARC (now dead), Alpha (now dead), 
> Itanium (never really alive), PowerPC, and x86.

Java originally was intended to be for embedded systems with very tight 
memory requirements, and having an interpreter is an easy way to squeeze 
more functionality into it. It's also hard to write a back end, so 
writing an interpreter instead is quicker and gets you to market faster.

Also, early Javas were interpreter only. JITs didn't come until much 
later, and the first one wasn't developed by Sun, it was developed by 
Symantec.