Imagine if management had not vetoed non "Java-like" syntax's during javascripts creation. Maybe Brendan Eich could have gotten a decent scheme dialect into the browser instead, people could have learned it (because in hypothetical retrospect, what else were they going to do? Not learn it?), and we would be in a far more pleasant position today...
If being "like java" was so important, then why didn't it just straight up lose to "actually java"?
I don't think that JS+DOM beating flash/java has much to do at all with "gee, this looks superficially like java, but is different enough to trip me up in rather weird ways".
Don't conflate why Flash lost to why Java (in the browser) lost, there are very different reasons. For one thing, Java had failed as a browser plugin long before Flash did (as if we don't still see Flash in the browser...I wonder what our discussion would be if not for Apple?).
That was likely the fear at the time, but what we actually saw was Javascript became popular because it was useful and there wasn't really anything else like it. It became popular, so Microsoft threw in with it too.
In order for that to have not happened, it would have had to be so unpopular that Microsoft would decide it wasn't worth adopting, but still popular enough to get Microsoft on board with the general idea. I just don't think that is likely; people would have sucked up a scheme-based javascript even if it was a tad unfamiliar; it was that useful.
(Not to mention, going with the cynical "three E's" theory of 90s Microsoft, they would have at least first adopted it before perverting it.)
I think people overplay the importance of being C-like. AutoLISP hit a bit earlier and found a very strong following in a non-programmer niche. People doing web development were already fucking around in HTML of course, so clearly they could wrap their heads around things over than curly braces.
microsoft had visual basic in the browser, working like php works. that was microsoft's vision, which would have been the web if netscape didn't still have significant market share. IE had to implement javascript to be compatible with pages written for netscape.
simple as that. just microsoft's famous "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy at work.
Microsoft's famous "embrace/extend/extinguish" is why they would have followed Netscape in implementing even a scheme-like javascript. They wouldn't have skipped the first two E's just because it was scheme-like instead of java-ish.
