Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail

Programming languages rise and fall based less on technical merit than on social and economic factors, according to Andrew Oram's analysis. Languages fail when they make programming unnecessarily difficult as a job (like Pascal's lack of string support), an art (like Ada's mandated adoption), or a vocation (like Perl's declining job market), forcing programmers to migrate to alternatives that better serve all three aspects of professional practice.