Seems like a nice language - but to succeed a language needs a big sponsor behind it e.g. C# Microsoft; go, kotlin Google; swift apple

Perl and c are old enough to predate this. C++ had Microsoft for a lot of time. Javascript had netscape when it was relvant - and today there's a push to Typescript (Microsoft again). Ruby is not that popular and Python might be the only real counter example :)

Java, it had a hardware company with no real software business pushing it. Very different to the others. But my actual answer is Scala, pretty popular, no big company.

Scala (though I personally really like it) is my example for a language that loses traction because it doesn't have a company pushing it :)

It’s the language of choice for hardcore Spark development, so it found a market.

From a keynote by Databricks in 2020 Spark Summit:

not to mention that they internally replaced spark scala with a c++ engine docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azu… And if the company behind spark don't trust Scala - who should?

Depends on how you define “success”. I would argue that Ruby is a very successful language. Or even Clojure (to take a less popular example): As long as it’s continuously maintained, has a loyal community, and a set of useful libraries, I don’t see what’s wrong

There's nothing wrong with niche languages. I really liked Ruby for the zen-like APIs ; or Clojure for the concise elegance ; or Scala for the power and flexibility - but I'd probably choose python, kotlin or rust (respectively) for new projects