Surely a language needs a niche for it to be successful?
(Review question from VL/HCC 2006) Agreed, but define success. A lot of early VPLs did not “succeed” in so far as they did not become widely used. Also there were a lot of genuine usability issues with early VPLs, since they simply weren’t as usable as they claimed to be. However they were successful in that they adequately explored a notation, and made us understand usability a lot better. Without pioneering efforts, we would not understand VPLs as much as we do today. If you set your objective to be “replace C++ within 5 years”, then unless something very strange happens, you will fail. Only once in a blue moon does a language make it. On the other hand, if your objective is to “further the understanding of VPLs”, then you have a much greater chance of success. Since Visula really is general-purpose, it won’t have a niche with which to capture the public imagination.
