Java Fail

Any such successor can only be produced by someone who understands it, and why it has been successful despite all the historical baggage it must drag along. It would be at least as expressive, but 90% smaller. Unfortunately most efforts sabotage themselves at the outset by including garbage collection and CONS or its equivalent. A powerful-enough language should be able to express those in the library, and not need them built into the core. Likewise, control structures, inheritance, and maybe even function argument lists.