In theory anything possible in one language is possible in other languages too. But by that argument you could also say anything possible in perl, can be done in C. Going by this line of argument, we may have to settle with using NAND gates.
Given how much the JVM has become important in the enterprise, something like Scala makes a perfect fit for a Java replacement. And those people who have used Scala generally say it preserves the spirit of 'TIMTOWDI' while staying good at strong typing, OO and functional paradigms.
Languages never really drop dead! But they slowly drift into getting irrelevant by the day.
