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Nobody knows how to get a programming-language miracle.

Sun committed a billion dollars to promoting Java—and the opportunity-cost loss is probably a big part of what killed them. It still would not have been enough to secure a place for Java, except that Java offered MS sharecroppers a road to a sort of freedom. Ada got even more $promotion than Java, in its day, but faded.

C got its miracle on the coattails of Unix, C++ on C's. Javascript rode on Netscape. (Who remembers MS Silverlight? MS spent as much as Sun.)

Python, if does survive, got its miracle the hard way. Perl and Ruby once seemed more secure than Python does now. Rust and Julia are going the hard route.

All it takes to fade away is not getting that miracle, mo maledictions needed.




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