Probably because even in 2016 most programmers never heard of the other possible choices? I started with C instead of SML, which was available then, I think, b

Probably because even in 2016 most programmers never heard of the other possible choices? I started with C instead of SML, which was available then, I think, because everyone I knew coded in C and they all said it's ok and a good language to learn. The same is probably true today: you first need to know that a language exists before trying to learn it, and beginner programmers are going to only know about languages their peers (other beginners, probably) use.