Reworded slightly better but still not a good Q & A format question
@KonradRudolph this is reworded slightly better, and slightly more on topic on programmers, but still comes off as your ranty opinion on why ( in your opinion ) why others made mistakes in these implementations you asking for justifications for other peoples design choices and decisions that can't be answered definitively. If they could it would be very easily Googled, which you would of already found the answer quickly, therefore all this is going to generate, even on programmers is speculation and supposition ( this is what all the answers currently are ) and no true answer.
Comments to the contrary of the claimed intent in the question:
In a comment to this answer:
"As I said, I’m not convinced by that at all. Objects do get instantiated before, and code gets executed before. It’d need a quote from one of the original developers to convince me that this was the reason."
"As I said, I’m not convinced by that at all. Objects do get instantiated before, and code gets executed before. It’d need a quote from one of the original developers to convince me that this was the reason." this comment from an answer below kind of proves you aren't going to get the answer you want unless you contact the original designers in question, anyone else is going to be speculating; this is still not constructive and off topic even with the attempt at re-wording it.
And other comments are just more discussion arguments on why the OP doesn't buy the answer/argument. Matter of fact, all the comments are just arguments support or "debunking" complaints even on the deleted question. I would vote to close again if I could.
"@Yannis True. I had somewhat hoped for an answer from one of the people originally involved (maybe from Eric? though his would probably be “because we copied Java”)."
"@Yannis True. I had somewhat hoped for an answer from one of the people originally involved (maybe from Eric? though his would probably be “because we copied Java”)."
Then mail the people that did what they did, why do you think polling here will provide the answer you are looking for?
The following quote from the re-worded answer are just unqualified opinion:
"... the following answers don’t satisfy me, as I deem them incorrect: ..."
"... the following answers don’t satisfy me, as I deem them incorrect: ..."
Here is the only viable answer I could come up with, I avoided putting it the actual question so as not to contribute to the noise there, but meta is about noise right :-)

(source: qkme.me)