We'll see in the next few years... We'll see...
There is a brilliant language that looks like Javascript that is the language you might be thinking of when you say "Javascript is pretty good". Unfortunately, that language only exists in people's heads.
In practice, Javascript is full of crazy weird edge cases where it is required to behave in an insane manner because the browser vendors have all been juggling the idiot ball amongst themselves when implementing it.
e.g. https://medium.com/@daffl/javascript-the-weird-parts-8ff3da5...
> I don't think a language's popularity has anything to do with it being a good, well-thought-out language. Just look at Javascript.
My point is that it's popular because we've been forced into using it, and the web is now much larger than it used to be. I'm explaining why it became popular, despite it's downfalls.
No other recent (past decade) poor language has come close to popular because we haven't had a similar issue arise in which we were grandfathered into.
You are the only one who inferred Javascript's unique circumstances and then extrapolated an irrelevant argument with me based on your own misunderstandings.
You seem to be missing the forest for the trees here. You said:
> I don't think a language's popularity has anything to do with it being a good, well-thought-out language.
Then used JavaScript as an example of this:
> Just look at Javascript.
I have sufficiently explained why your correlation does not equal causation, as JavaScript is the only language I'm aware of to have gone through being popular while at the same time being a poorly-built language in the past decade, and hence, being a poor analogy as an attempt to prove your point.
If you'd care to at the very least show some other examples, I'd be overjoyed to see them.
For the record, I completely agree with your point—I also don't believe popularity is directly correlated by the design of the language—but I don't have a single shred of evidence to back it up, only examples from outside of the programming ecosystem. That's why I'm inquiring.