Do you have to be a better X (for all X mainstream) to be a successful mainstream programming language ? Smalltalk lost out to C++ back in the 80s even though Smalltalk had a purer object model (Objects all the way down) with lots of powerful abstractions, espoused the virtues of garbage collection, byte codes and JIT (only later to be hijacked by Java) and provided a solid refactoring browser based IDE. On the other hand, C++ was positioned to be a better C and had played upon the familiarity cards of having the curly brace syntax, syntactic compatibility with C but with better type-safety. Even today, we find enough impact that Smalltalk, both as a language and as a platform, has in the market. Ruby is strongly influenced by Smalltalk - even many dynamic language gurus feel that Ruby should be made to run on the highly optimized Strongtalk VM rather than labour through the process of carving out its own or try to make it run on the JVM through JRuby. Gemstone's object server runs Smalltalk and provides a state-of-the-art platform for developing, deploying, and managing scalable, high-performance, multi-tier applications based on business objects. Recently announced new Web programming environment from Sun Labs, Lively Kernel was inspired in part by the success of the Squeak Smalltalk programming environment.
Why did Smalltalk lose out to C++ ?
Eventually Java hit the sweetest of spots as a better and easy-to-use C++. Java adapted the Smalltalk VM and roped in the same features that people rejected with Smalltalk in the 80s. The only difference that Java created was that the community focused on building a strong ecosystem to support the average programmer better than any of its predecessors. This included richer libraries and frameworks, great tooling, a uniform runtime environment, JITs that generated efficient code and of course a very warm and supportive community participation. Lawrence Kesteloot makes a strong point when he emphasizes that helping the average programmer creates the necessary strength and durability of the ecosystem for the language to thrive.
Enterprise projects thrive on the ecosystem.
No matter how elegant your language is, unless you have a strong ecosystem that lives up to the demand / supply economics of developing enterprise software, it will not be able to move into the ranks of BigCo projects. Even the most beautiful piece of code that you may write has an IDE life directly proportional to the skillset of the programmer who will maintain it. Of course there are plenty of good programmers working with the BigCo enterprise projects, but it is the machinery assuring a copius supply of average programmers that keeps the economics ticking.
And only one language has so far been able to create this ecosystem !
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By the way, when you say "And only one language has so far been able to create this ecosystem !", I presume that you're talking about COBOL... right? Oh, sorry... it it C you meant? C++? Visual Basic? There's a strong network effect (the more who use it the more advantage it gets) so there's some tendency toward "one-at-a-time" behavior, but the torch gets passed around quite a bit.
"but the torch gets passed around quite a bit."
any guess on who the current torch bearer is ? ;)
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