Relevant to today's discussion. (I only read the title!)

[Alan Karp]

https://c3-lang.org/blog/you_have_to_market_your_programming_language/

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Alan Karp

[Mark S. Miller]

Again, just going from the title, my personal answer: "Unless it's JavaScript"

On Fri, Aug 21, 2026 at 1:59 PM Alan Karp <alan...@gmail.com> wrote:

https://c3-lang.org/blog/you_have_to_market_your_programming_language/

--------------
Alan Karp

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[Matt Rice]

In other words, real language adoption is built on monopoly rather
than marketing.

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[Mark S. Miller]

Javascript is whose monopoly?

  Cheers,
  --MarkM

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[Matt Rice]

Assuming we can basically ignore the language tag of the html <script> attribute
Until wasm it was the only scripting language supported if you wanted
your website to be usable in any
web browser. Not monopoly in the economic entity sense of being
controlled by one person. But some other
form of monopoly of the commons. In the sense that red octagons have a
monopoly on the stop sign.

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[Mark S. Miller]

On Sat, Aug 22, 2026 at 8:22 PM Matt Rice <rat...@gmail.com> wrote:

Assuming we can basically ignore the language tag of the html <script> attribute
Until wasm it was the only scripting language supported if you wanted
your website to be usable in any
web browser. Not monopoly in the economic entity sense of being
controlled by one person. But some other
form of monopoly of the commons. In the sense that red octagons have a
monopoly on the stop sign.

In that sense, sure. I'd find another word.

 

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[Matt Rice]

On Sat, Aug 22, 2026 at 9:44 PM 'Mark S. Miller' via friam
<fr...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 22, 2026 at 8:22 PM Matt Rice <rat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Assuming we can basically ignore the language tag of the html <script> attribute
>> Until wasm it was the only scripting language supported if you wanted
>> your website to be usable in any
>> web browser. Not monopoly in the economic entity sense of being
>> controlled by one person. But some other
>> form of monopoly of the commons. In the sense that red octagons have a
>> monopoly on the stop sign.
>
>
> In that sense, sure. I'd find another word.
>

Monoculture is the best alternative that I can come up with, fwiw not
to pick on javascript exclusively I also believe there are plenty of
other examples,
c and unix, Ada and DOD, sql for databases and the relational model...

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[William ML Leslie]

On Sat, 22 Aug 2026 at 06:59, Alan Karp <alan...@gmail.com> wrote:

https://c3-lang.org/blog/you_have_to_market_your_programming_language/

Oh dear.

So - this could be a just-me kind of thing, but maybe it's valuable for me to mention.  I don't think in these terms at all.  When things become popular, the default I assume is that it is entirely marketing, and not because it's actually good.  My go-to example for this is the Angular frontend framework, which seemed to become popular because someone started integrating it into .NET tutorials at Microsoft.  I hear people like newer versions of it, but in the first few years it had such obtuse and confusing concurrency bugs that I walked away from it on several projects.

I think people generally dislike most popular languages, except for one: whichever one they have chosen.

On the other hand, I remember when I first started working in software, everyone told me that there would never be any jobs in python, it's not fast enough, nobody would use a language without a corporation behind it, supporting it.

Promoting a new technology is a lot of effort, especially when you are working on a team with a specific skill set and no desire to diversify.  The best impression you can get is when you pick something up and run with it, not stopping to ask permission, and then document your success.  It's important to finish that last step.

--

William ML Leslie

Never interrupt the enemy when they're pushing PHP to production so they can get some sleep.