> Calling VM's a mistake is surprising considering that today, a crushing majority of code (JVM, .net and arguably, LLVM) runs on a VM. That was more of a self

> Calling VM's a mistake is surprising considering that today, a crushing majority of code (JVM, .net and arguably, LLVM) runs on a VM. That was more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than a need. There simply was a shortage of reusable compiler backends in the 90s, so when major companies (Sun, IBM, and Microsoft in particular) decided to devote all their resources to the JVM and the CLR, then those became easy targets for language implementors (and low-hanging fruit, too). Regardless of what you think of them, their success is probably mostly the result of going where the most resources were being spent.