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Comment by copperx | Hacker News Reader

It's funny how stuff that got put together quickly like GW-BASIC and JavaScript got so much success because of luck and popular appeal. It's like music. The best music has never been in the top of the charts. The best movies have never won Oscars.

This is pop computing.

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It wasn’t luck or popular appeal, it was like they say in real estate: “location, location, location.” JavaScript came bundled with every Web browser, and GW-BASIC came bundled with every IBM PC clone. A language that everybody in the world already has a copy of is going to get a lot of use, whether it’s good or not.

Not just IBM PC, but also hobbyist microcomputers. Few people could afford to have the real thing at home... but they could afford Spectrum or Commodore. And then those BASIC skills would readily translate to PC.

I think they were riding a wave as it was beginning to form; the microprocessor wave. It was very much part of a place in time but they made some exceptional choices given that context. I don’t think that their success was due to luck or popular appeal, it was due to vision and the ability to execute on that vision.

Well, some of us think that acts like Kanye, Jay-Z, Amy Weinstein, the Beatles, and Led Zeppelin were pretty great even though they had the crassness and audacity to make it to the top of the charts

Please don't mix Kanye and Jay-Z with Beatles and Led Zeppelin, they are in different leagues.

Sounds like you don't know music.

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