[dannyobrien]

What I've heard from Evan and others, is that Elm's timetable is modelled on Python's, which would mean (my estimations here) that they expect almost a decade of obscurity to give them room to tweak and generalise the language, before really expecting any kind of popularity (which might lock them into certain approaches).

Note that doesn't necessarily mean a long period of instability -- I think one of the reasons why they're taking it so slow at the moment is to see how to match tools like "elm-update" to seamless allow language upgrades. But it does mean that they're still in the phase of, for instance, removing language features rather than monotonically adding them, and trying to avoid dependencies on Javascript and the current Javascript ecosystem.

I also think that the burst of excitement around TEA and using Elm as a front-end web application tool was seen as an indicator that they were heading in the right direction, rather than an absolute flag that they should try to achieve dominance in that sector, or concentrate on it exclusively.