While this is true JVM disadvantages are only a problem in very niche domains like embedded or kernel development. (and where you are forced to use JS like web

While this is true JVM disadvantages are only a problem in very niche domains like embedded or kernel development. (and where you are forced to use JS like web ofc) Overall it's definitely in contention for "universal" runtime and Kotlin/Java are definitely close to fully general purpose languages that do all things sufficiently well. IMO the reason why they win the general purpose category is because they have the least hard limitations. CLR is in a similar quality class to JVM, C# is a very good language. I think if you are not on the JVM that is where you should be for general purpose programming. JS/Ruby/Python/etc are all single threaded, this is a hard limitation that I can't look past. It's a needlessly painful constraint when you just need something CPU intensive to be done quickly. Additionally lack of static typing isn't something I am willing to compromise on anymore. I'm older now, I don't have time for the sort of defensive programming required to make these languages produce programs with as few bugs as a statically typed equivalent. I still use Ruby for scripts but it's not a tool I pick up for anything but the quickest of hacks anymore. C/C++ are too unsafe to use without too much brain space dedicated to making sure you are managing memory correctly. Also lacking centralised repository and package management ala Maven. Functional languages are too polarising, I can use them and appreciate them but rallying a team around them is too hard. Haskell and it's ecosystem taught me a great many things and it's definitely what most good languages steal from these days. Bright spot of JVM/CLR is you can mix a bit of them in when you need to with compatibility with the rest of your code with F# and Clojure/Scala. Rust is getting there but isn't there yet. I think it's the most promising besides JVM/CLR. Really high quality type system, tooling is coming along, great quality ecosystem, async getting worked out. As it's borrow checker gets smarter and perhaps an easy GC library is introduced (atleast easier than Rc/Arc/Cell/friends) then it's got great things in it's future. For me it's Kotlin for now. It's the right mixture of modern, easy to learn and built on solid proven tech without any severe limitations.