Most new programming languages come out of academia and are mathematical toys proving some aspect of type theory. They are as flawless as they are useless, more demos to backup a paper than things of independent value. No one attacks them because they make no claims that are not proven with 20 pages of denotational pedantics.

And then other languages come out companies (Apple, Facebook, Google) and are backed by endless money and instant communities of their own internal users. The languages are made by teams of elite engineers and enjoy instant institutional credibility.

It is a hard world for the independent language creators. I know, I've burned a decade on my own language project. So I am pretty forgiving.

I find Alex's wild, "I'm sure a solution exists to this problem and I'll solve it when I have the spare time", philosophy rather refreshing. And the fact that people write about his work and that he has an active community shows there is something to the project. I suspect people in the community have workarounds for the missing bits and treat the unsolved problems as goals.

If Alex had been conservative, never sharing until he was done and never risking a promise he might not keep, would you know his name?