I hope not. Stellar's appeal is its simplicity, and shipping a full programming environment with all the baggage of maintenance over time seems overly complex,

I hope not. Stellar's appeal is its simplicity, and shipping a full programming environment with all the baggage of maintenance over time seems overly complex, and prone to causing issues down the line. There's very likely a way to achieve similar smart contracts, albeit without network consensus à la Ethereum, in the current Stellar world.