[jbverschoor]

I mean, that slogan still holds true 30 years later.

I’ve never used Fortran.. I started out with basic and wanted to do C/C++ because of gamedev. I loved the syntax. Perhaps bc it made me feel smart. The C-style syntax is also big part what made Java popular.

However, I think more and more than the popularity is because Java was the de facto standard to teach at universities. The reason for that was that it was a very clear language, and easy to compile, unlike C, which has so many behavioral quirks, and ofc memory management.

These days Python is being taught in both CS and statistics, which creates a broader market and broader usage spectrum.

Ruby, in my opinion, got big because of rails, but loved because of the stdlib

[cb321]

Besides already agreeing to disagree on the Java slogan & syntax, I agree with all you say. Familiarity/being taught in schools is for sure a huge deal. { Not really "news" - Steve Jobs used to give high schools Apple IIs for the same reason. :-) } When even Scheme-inventing MIT moved to Python the writing was on the wall.

I've always been a little surprised Nim wasn't more popular with its Python like syntax, Lisp like meta-power, C-like speed and usually automatic memory management. Ah well.