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In short, a language needs advocates that can brag about something, and the brags need to be objectively accurate. Do not claim the adjective "fast" if I can trivially outrun you in Python, or claim "simple" if I can trivially write shorter source code in Java, etc.

It also need to be an interesting thing to brag about, but, honestly, just getting the first bit is enough challenge....

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>and the brags need to be objectively accurate

No, it just needs to be convincing. Plenty of convincing lies (or unproven claims) are used to sell programming languages.

cough, cough

The problem with inaccurate bragging is that the loop ends up unclosed; the advocate says "This language is so fast!", the earliest of the early adopters try it and it isn't fast, and so they slag your language on their blog. And in this case, there is a such thing as bad publicity.

Even when I disagree with the propaganda of a language community (lookin' right at you, Node), there is enough truth that it made it through that gauntlet. In that case I'd argue it isn't that they lie about Node, it's that they lie about all the other languages they putatively compare themselves to. Apparently that strategy does work....

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