Well, it's been my observation that the "down and dirty" languages make it.  C is one of those -- it gives much freedom; Pascal (made for teaching students programming) is strongly-typed.  In other words, a pain.

FORTRAN because it was the first; COBOL because it appealed to suits.

Assembler because it rulez!!! ;->

I hope Ruby is one that frees programmers.  From the conversations on ruby-talk, this appears to be the case.  I slipped Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP into a staid corporate environment.  It plus Jabber became the intranet for the company I worked for.

> Hello Ted,
> 
> Thursday, December 12, 2002, 2:00:28 AM, you wrote:
> 
> >> 2. Java is in vogue. They want the language to be there after 10-20
> >> years...
> 
> T> Unfortunately, people rise in management by NOT making waves...
> 
> it's the MATZ'S position that Ruby will never be REAL WORLD language.
> it's his own toy and never will appreciate features needed for
> corporate use
> 
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
>  Bulat                            mailto:bulatz / integ.ru
> 
> 
>