[ncmncm]

The overwhelming majority of things have been launched and soon sank with little trace just because they were not enough better than the competition. (I count Modula, D and C# among those, from different arenas.)

It is still far from clear whether Rust will achieve the miracle of becoming mainstream. That puts it far ahead of most languages, where it is obvious from the outset that they will fizzle.

[mdoms]

C#, a 21 year old programming language which consistently makes it into the top 6 programming languages by popularity in all methodologies of measuring, "launched and soon sank with little trace"? That's an interesting take.

[ncmncm]

Hope springs eternal.

We can be pretty confident, anyway, that it won't outlive Microsoft.

[kobebrookskC3]

is that saying anything if microsoft is basically eternal? what, you think the company that makes excel and windows is gonna go out of business any time soon?

[ncmncm]

The usual route is becoming irrelevant. Windos failed to achieve relevance in mobile and cloud, and desktops become less relevant every day. If at some point you don't need MS to do excel anymore, MS becomes irrelevant there, too.

There are still Burroughs, Univac, and Honeywell computer companies, in a way, but they attract no attention.