Technology
Being Popular
paulgraham.com
Technology
32 min read → 70 sec
Programming language popularity follows what expert hackers adopt, then spreads through tools, systems, and time. The strongest languages are terse, hackable, interactive, and built around powerful libraries and real applications.
Programming languages become popular when expert hackers choose them and others follow
A popular language needs four basics: a free implementation, a book, something to hack, and time
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Legacy software like Cobol and hype like Ada and Java affect popularity, but less over the long term
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A language has to stay popular to stay good, because real users drive improvements
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Hackers prefer languages that are:
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Terse
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Interactive
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Hackable
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Rich in orthogonal libraries
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Strong typing hurts brevity because programmers must write declarations before programs
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Good languages let programmers break abstractions and access internals when needed
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Classic macros are powerful because they allow arbitrary source transformations with simple rules
Hygienic macros block some useful cases, because variable capture is sometimes exactly what macros need
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Great libraries matter more than type systems, object orientation, or functional purity
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A good profiler improves real program speed more than a compiler that only generates fast code
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Languages win big systems by being good for throwaway programs, because big programs often start small
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Perl became popular before Perl 5 was suitable for serious programs, because it excelled at throwaway scripts
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Languages usually become popular as the scripting language of a popular system
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independent users is enough to make a new language real
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The best way to reach the first twenty users is a trojan horse application
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Physical books still matter because bookstores help hackers discover new languages
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Common Lisp is unpopular partly because it is an orphan and a bad Unix scripting language
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A new Lisp could become popular by serving server-based applications better than Perl or Python
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