> Back then Perl and JS were only really used in web dev Wasn't Perl used pretty extensively for sysadmin tasks, too? It's a dependency of a lot of Unix tools

> Back then Perl and JS were only really used in web dev Wasn't Perl used pretty extensively for sysadmin tasks, too? It's a dependency of a lot of Unix tools (e.g., git) and I thought that dated to around that time or a bit before. For what it's worth, this video[0] gives the following percentages for some dynamic languages in 2008: JavaScript....21% PHP...........21% Python.........8% Ruby...........4% Perl...........4% Matlab.........3% ================= TOTAL.........60% (I totally forgot about PHP earlier. Oops!) So I stand my my initial claim that it wasn't the case that the _vast_ majority of programmers had yet to experience a dynamic language. Though I can understand it seeming that way to Atwood; didn't he mostly do application development? [0]: Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI