This suggests we clarify what is meant for a language to be "mostly dead". If we consider size compared to total market or trajectory we may ultimately conclude that a project for example Clojure is "mostly dead" compared to JavaScript or java.
However this isn't ultimately the most useful metric. Would you for example select a restaurant based on the reviews and the cuisine or to total annual revenue of its parent company. If your metric suggests you forego surf and turf at a local diner in order to eat a Whopper you may be asking the wrong questions.
For your consideration here is a better one. A language is alive when its ecosystem is likely to receive enough interest and talent to continue to develop enough to allow its users to continue to accomplish useful goals. Being embedded in 2 of the top platforms and being able to reuse those libraries is a factor. Relying on these host platforms means that it can remain alive indefinitely while being useful to only thousands instead of millions as long as it drives enough interest to pay the salaries of the dozens who develop the core and the hundreds that write useful tools.
However this isn't ultimately the most useful metric. Would you for example select a restaurant based on the reviews and the cuisine or to total annual revenue of its parent company. If your metric suggests you forego surf and turf at a local diner in order to eat a Whopper you may be asking the wrong questions.
For your consideration here is a better one. A language is alive when its ecosystem is likely to receive enough interest and talent to continue to develop enough to allow its users to continue to accomplish useful goals. Being embedded in 2 of the top platforms and being able to reuse those libraries is a factor. Relying on these host platforms means that it can remain alive indefinitely while being useful to only thousands instead of millions as long as it drives enough interest to pay the salaries of the dozens who develop the core and the hundreds that write useful tools.
https://clojure.org/news/2020/02/20/state-of-clojure-2020