I understand your strategic motivation, but to convince people your language is best, saying "my language is better than X" can be a very bad tactic. The reason is that most programmers aren't big PL fans, and that, to be honest, language choice (among various more-or-less suitable options) has a negligible -- if any -- effect on a business's bottom line. The biggest effect is on programmer enjoyment, as there are (perhaps unfortunately) many programmers who feel that their programming language does affect their satisfaction from programming. Such a preference for a language is often largely personal, but you can make your language more or less attractive to certain crowds. Creating a combative, competitive atmosphere, often results in a very fervent community, but usually not a large one, as such an atmosphere doesn't have a broad appeal. To increase the appeal of a language, the best things you can do is create great tooling, lots of useful libraries, and a friendly community.
In addition, an argument for "my language is better than X" can usually be easily countered with an argument for the opposite, creating a net result that doesn't help your goals. Debates are sometimes interesting and informative, but they're not effective marketing.
> language choice (among various more-or-less suitable options) has a negligible -- if any -- effect on a business's bottom line.
That's just, like, your opinion, man.
(By which I mean: I disagree, and we both know there's no clear evidence one way or another)
> To increase the appeal of a language, the best things you can do is create great tooling, lots of useful libraries, and a friendly community.
I do what I can, but a bad language can do those just as easily as a good language - tooling and libraries are much more a function of big-corp backing than they are of good language design. It's remarkable how much Scala has managed to achieve in those areas without having a big name behind it, but there's no competing with the amount of programmer-hours the likes of e.g. Google can pour in. The only way Scala can hope to win is on actual language design merit (and maybe winning popularity on that is impossible, but given how well Scala has managed to do so far, I remain hopeful).
> In addition, an argument for "my language is better than X" can usually be easily countered with an argument for the opposite, creating a net result that doesn't help your goals. Debates are sometimes interesting and informative, but they're not effective marketing.
A genuinely better language should have at least a slightly better chance of winning a debate over which language is better. If we don't believe that then we have no hope of ever learning truths, and may as well pick languages to use at random (or I guess go with whatever Google picked).
> I disagree, and we both know there's no clear evidence one way or another
I think that the lack of evidence in favor of a strong effect is normally counted in favor of the null hypothesis. It may not feel fair, but the burden of proof is solely on those who claim a strong effect exists, not on those who don't.
> but a bad language can do those just as easily as a good language
Again, the burden of proof is solely on those who claim there is such a thing as a good language with a strong effect. If you can't display an effect, or claim that others can also induce it by other means is a win for the null hypothesis. If you claim there is such a thing as a "bad" language, and there is no evidence this is true, doing so will harm your cause.
> A genuinely better language should have at least a slightly better chance of winning a debate over which language is better.
I just don't think that a debate is the right way to establish an empirical claim. It's ok to engage in a debate - even a heated one - but the lack of evidence should at least encourage humility. My point is just that an imagined "win" at a debate only harms your mission. If it convinces anyone, which is highly doubtful, it's probably not the people you want, anyway. An approach that says, "I think this is cool. I like it and it helps me and may help you, too" is so much more effective at marketing than "my way is best" especially if the evidence is not on your side.
In addition, an argument for "my language is better than X" can usually be easily countered with an argument for the opposite, creating a net result that doesn't help your goals. Debates are sometimes interesting and informative, but they're not effective marketing.