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I have an over-simplified and a somewhat ill-adviced theory of programming language popularity, not without some humoric value, I hope. It's called the it's-just-so-damned-easy-to theory of programming language popularity. It is based on the idea that language choices are not based on sound financial and technical evaluations, but, rather, on the implementer's impression of the language. And because us normal humans try to avoid difficulty as much as we can, we choose the tool that just hopefully makes it damn easy to get the dang thing done. Moreover, I argue also that the thing that a given language makes it so damned easy to do is generally easier in that language than it is in any other language.

That is why some languages never got popular. Take for example Eiffel. Its design by contract is a neat and sound idea, but what design by contract 'makes it just so damned easy' is nothing concrete, only an abstract value of knowing that you're doing more to ensure that the program is actually correct. And, again, it is a wonderful idea, but most of us programmers don't, believe it or not, give a damn about correctness. Well, we may give a slight damn, but we are not doing everything to make it so.

Or Haskell. What a pure and elegant language. But if getting a frigging 'hello world' out of it is such a pain, it is never going to attract masses. (Maybe that's for the better, by the way.)

So, here is my list of (some) programming languages' it's-just-so-damned-easy-tos (in no particular order):

With PHP, it's just so damned easy to hack up a dynamic database backed website.

With Java, it's just so damned easy to get your manager's approval for using it on a software project.

With Perl, it's just so damned easy to say it all in three lines of code or less. (In reality, it's not, but that's beoynd the scope of my theory.)

With C, it's just so damned easy to make the algorithm go fast. (Hardly easy per se, but easy compared to many other languages, at least.)

With C++, it's just so damned easy to do some hellishly complex and complicated code.

With Visual Basic, it's just so damned easy to make a Windows application. (Well, at least the interface.)

With Python, it's just so damned easy to make clean looking, beautiful code (that also works, but that is also beoynd the scope of my theory).

I'll leave you now to chew on this and, perhaps, expanding on the idea.