Torsten.Bergmann at phaidros.com quoted:
	James Gosling (Java creator) on the object/primitive gap: 
	>From http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/archives/001452.html

	Depends on your performance goals.  Uniform type systems are
	easy if your performance goals aren't real strict.  In the java
	case, I wanted to be able to compile "a=b+c" into one
	instruction on almost all architectures with a reasonable
	compiler.

I note that Eiffel has multiple inheritance, generic parameters on
classes, and is "objects all the way down" (INTEGER is a class &c).
Yet "a := b+c" in Eiffel compiles to the same code you'd have got for
"a = b+c" in C.  Uniform type systems are quite compatible with "strict"
performance goals.

Gosling's comment boils down to "it looked like a hard problem to get it
right so we didn't bother".

I don't know when work started on "Oak", but I wouldn't be surprised if
Eiffel was older...