> What you see as innovation is just slow diffusion into mainstream

It can be both. Type inference isn't a brand-new idea, but it still takes work to diffuse it into mainstream, practical languages, especially retrofitting it onto existing languages that weren't designed for it. That still counts as innovation in my book.

Yeah fair point. I'm just a bit salty that a lot of people only see the late stage effect onto their language and might assume that it came out of a vacuum you know. Then they look at you weird with your scheme, sml and prologs. Alas