📝Languages become popular when they bring innovative runtime
The idea is that languages become popular when they bring unique runtime features. The language itself is secondary.
This makes sense, because languages are usually selected based on the environment and performance requirements.
browser → JavaScript
macOS → Swift (Objective-C previously)
low-level → C
static single-file binaries → Go
Java might be explained as non-dynamic cross-platform memory safe runtime (which was pretty unique at the time).
Erlang runtime is quite unique as well: message passing, lightweight concurrency, distributed, fault-tolerant, hot code swapping.
Exceptions not explained:
scripting languages: why Python and PHP are popular and Ruby and Perl are not
C++ and TypeScript (language evolution, Some programming languages become popular because they offer a quick upgrade)