I think that used to be true when systems were simpler and expectations were lower. But the expected standard of modern languages has come a long way. And I'm not just talking about libraries: performance, safety (strong static type systems are one can of worms, GC and other runtime checks are another), and even syntax design are things that state-of-the-art languages spend years iterating on before they're considered ‘usable’.
Some other more recent data points:
Go was designed at Google (one of the biggest software development entities of our times, with input from existing PL luminaries) in 2007, released in 2009, and officially considered 1.0 in 2012, five years later;
Clojure was started in 2005 (there were two other attempts to build similar languages dating back to 2003, but let's charitably omit them) and hit 1.0 in 2009;
Zig has been going for about 11 years and hasn't hit 1.0 yet.
Rust's nine-year record (2006–2015) is on the longer side, but not a huge outlier.
Of course, this is just the time to 1.0; I think in practice languages tending to iterate a lot before becoming mainstream (which is a weak proxy for general usability, but at least should work in one direction). Rust today has come a long way from 1.0, for example, as has Go. Definitely the ecosystems at 1.0 releases tend to remain noticeably underpowered, and even if you want to ignore libraries for a language it's harder to justify excluding other tools that make it easier to work with the language on your own or with other people to build real-world software, like editor support, debuggers, documentation, or package managers.
Some other more recent data points:
Go was designed at Google (one of the biggest software development entities of our times, with input from existing PL luminaries) in 2007, released in 2009, and officially considered 1.0 in 2012, five years later;
Clojure was started in 2005 (there were two other attempts to build similar languages dating back to 2003, but let's charitably omit them) and hit 1.0 in 2009;
Zig has been going for about 11 years and hasn't hit 1.0 yet.
Rust's nine-year record (2006–2015) is on the longer side, but not a huge outlier.
Of course, this is just the time to 1.0; I think in practice languages tending to iterate a lot before becoming mainstream (which is a weak proxy for general usability, but at least should work in one direction). Rust today has come a long way from 1.0, for example, as has Go. Definitely the ecosystems at 1.0 releases tend to remain noticeably underpowered, and even if you want to ignore libraries for a language it's harder to justify excluding other tools that make it easier to work with the language on your own or with other people to build real-world software, like editor support, debuggers, documentation, or package managers.