"There is an huge junkyard of technologies that failed to gain broad acceptance, many of them far more revolutionary than Rust (e.g.: Lisp, Smalltalk). I don't see why those technologies' story can be avoided."

Yeah, but I think more importantly much of the value that Rust brings would have been available 30 years ago if language development/selection wasn't so siloed, full of biases, and driven by (often undeserved) popularity.

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bobajeff 8 months ago | parent [-]

As someone who is fascinated with Smalltalk and to a lesser extent Lisp. I think the reason those didn't catch on more broadly is that they were too early and different.

Smalltalk I believe was designed to run on computers that wouldn't be around until the 90s and and when the 90s arrived it didn't have a big company pouring gobs of money into marketing it unlike Java. There are other factors that also contributed it's unpopularity. Like who wants to distribute a whole system for each smalltalk program they sell?

I think also Lisp and APL weren't designed to run on the weak PCs in their day. You needed to use a timesharing system to program in them.

	▲	igouy 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		> ... when the 90s arrived it didn't have a big company pouring gobs of money into marketing it unlike Java. IBM not big enough? :-) But of course IBM's consulting group were technology neutral and pivoted from Smalltalk to Java when the wind changed. > Like who wants to distribute a whole system for each smalltalk program they sell? Smalltalk was marketed to corporations as a 4GL replacement for green screen systems. So enterprise wide client-server apps for insurance/reinsurance, call center outsourcing, assembly line control, options/derivatives/reconciliation, ERP CRM TLA TLA, etc etc I don't claim to have been in "The Room Where It Happens" meetings, so I'll just say that from my lowly perspective during that period Allen Wirfs-Brock's comment ring true. https://wirfs-brock.com/allen/posts/914