You're basically describing the erlang runtime, which is more popular than "totally niche" but not as explosively popular as, say JVM, .NET, JS, or even Dart.

You're basically describing the erlang runtime, which is more popular than "totally niche" but not as explosively popular as, say JVM, .NET, JS, or even Dart. In fact despite being a practitioner of the erlang runtime, I would say that its lack of popularity is a point against the author.