Excerpt from Concepts of Programming Languages Ninth Edition by Professor Robert W. Sebesta
Many programmers when given a choice of languages for a new project, continue to use the language with which they are most familiar, even if it is poorly suited to the project.
If these programmers were familiar with a wider range of languages, they would be better able to choose the language that includes the features that best address the characteristics of the problem at hand.
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Although it is usually possible to determine why a particular programming language became popular, many believe, at least in retrospect, that the most popular languages are not always the best available. In some cases, it might be concluded that a language became widely used, at least in part, because those in positions to choose languages were not sufficiently familiar with programming language concepts.
For example, many people believe it would have been better if ALGOL 60 (Backus et al., 1963) had displaced Fortran (Metcalf, et al., 2004) in the early 1960s, because it was more elegant and had much better control statements than Fortran, among other reasons. That it did not is due partly to the programmers and software development managers of that time, many of whom did not clearly understand the conceptual design of ALGOL 60. They found its description difficult to read (which it was) and even more difficult to understand. They did not appreciate the benefits of block structure, recursion, and well-structured control statements, so they failed to see the benefits of ALGOL 60 over Fortran.
Of course, many other factors contributed to the lack of acceptance of ALGOL 60, as we will see in Chapter 2. However, the fact that computer users were generally unaware of the benefits of the language played a significant role.
In general, if those who choose languages were better informed, perhaps better languages would eventually squeeze out poorer ones.