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They were first round languages. When Python came out, it was largely a C / C++ driven world (Python predates Java by 3 years). It's original use case was around scripting C / C++ programs. If I recall correctly one of the biggest use cases for Python early on was doing test harnesses for C++ codebases in particular. Python's ability to basically be "wrapper for C / C++ libraries" is still its main strength, though clearly the language evolved since this time period. Pascal was a big player too back then, and has fallen quite substantially from developer mind-share. (in the 1980s, predating this era, there was a lot of work and energy around Objective Pascal and getting that on every platform they could. It almost worked. This is what Embarcadero[0] is all about via Delphi[1]) PHP was "easier" Perl. Perl was also ubiquitous at one time because of CGI and the web. PHP was one of the first languages to have the same ease of deployment story as Perl but a much easier syntax to deal with. Again, language space wasn't as crowded then. Certainly both were easier to use than C / C++. It was easier to gain a foothold in the first round (web 1.0 era if you will) of software and development. There was simply less competition. Java didn't even come out till 1996. The second era of languages, I think really starting with Go and continuing through to Rust, they faced a bigger uphill battle. There simply isn't the mindshare to capture as easily as there was back then. Admittedly, I'm still not sure to this day why Ruby took off, other than it offered a great developer first experience as a language, from what I understand. It seems people who use Ruby tend to really like it. It seems it has a stickiness there that other languages don't, maybe? I've always been confused by this one, and I admit that's due to personal bias of not enjoying its syntax at all, however there are clearly lots of people who do. I just prefer one true way of doing things. [0]: https://www.embarcadero.com/ [1]: https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/object-pascal-ha... |