Are there examples of languages that were not popular for a long while before suddenly going mainstream (the definition of success from the article)? I feel like even a potential killer app is not enough, there were some interesting web frameworks for smalltalk (like seaside) but it wasn't enough to shake in any way the feeling that the language was a dead end for most people (and they can just wait for a reimplementation in a popular or new hyped language if it's really a good idea).
Phoenix/Ecto for example would probably not get the attention it gets (and deserves) if it focused on Erlang instead of a new language with some momentum. And Lisp seems to get it even worse when all of them (old and new, with as many programming paradigms as there can be) get grouped together as one 60 year old language family. Hopefully clojure, racket and other newcomers can turn this around.
Phoenix/Ecto for example would probably not get the attention it gets (and deserves) if it focused on Erlang instead of a new language with some momentum. And Lisp seems to get it even worse when all of them (old and new, with as many programming paradigms as there can be) get grouped together as one 60 year old language family. Hopefully clojure, racket and other newcomers can turn this around.