>You can optimize along increase-developer-productivity or along increase-potential-developer-population. We chose the former.
I have to ask. How could it be any different?
The vast majority (all?) of the languages are made by devs. Devs work harder and produce better code when they're working on something they want to use.
And the mainstream corporate-sponsored languages (Java, C#, Go) all seem to have started with groups of devs that really didn't want to use C++, which provides roughly the same incentives.
The kind of drive needed to develop and maintain a solid language (to say nothing about an easy to work with language) kind of has to be a passion project, and people aren't generally able to choose what they're passionate about.
I have to ask. How could it be any different?
The vast majority (all?) of the languages are made by devs. Devs work harder and produce better code when they're working on something they want to use.
And the mainstream corporate-sponsored languages (Java, C#, Go) all seem to have started with groups of devs that really didn't want to use C++, which provides roughly the same incentives.
The kind of drive needed to develop and maintain a solid language (to say nothing about an easy to work with language) kind of has to be a passion project, and people aren't generally able to choose what they're passionate about.