> These two statements are contradictory. If it was indeed so "poor", people would notice :)
Would they? The history of programming is full of great ideas that took a very long time to reach mainstream adoption. We also did some things that in hindsight were bad ideas, but for a time were very popular.
This is because the programming language "market" is not rational. It moves at the speed of education, not the speed of innovation. People learn a language and they make useful things with it. Why would they stray into niche languages and PL research?
Would they? The history of programming is full of great ideas that took a very long time to reach mainstream adoption. We also did some things that in hindsight were bad ideas, but for a time were very popular.
This is because the programming language "market" is not rational. It moves at the speed of education, not the speed of innovation. People learn a language and they make useful things with it. Why would they stray into niche languages and PL research?