I'll admit, I was only in HS in the 90s, but by the time I got to college and was studying CS that confusion never occurred to me. Was there really a period when strong typing was specifically associated with VMs and vice versa?
You studied CS, and probably even had a nice CS degree.
Many people discussing about languages in HN and reddit, tend to first of all, mix languages with implementations. Language X is compiled, interpreted, ..., sometimes without knowing multiple implementations are available.
Then many never used strong typed languages with native compilers, like Pascal, Modula-2 and so on. Their experience tends to be limited to JVM/.NET languages.
Outside of this world, they kind of know C and C++ are not as strong typed as those languages, don't have a GC and have native code compilers available.
Hence, strong typed typed languages are managed and require a VM.
This is a pattern I observed in many young developers without CS background.
