The biggest difference between then and now is not really the 'progressiveness' of the languages but that the tooling is free. It's nigh-impossible for a non-fr

The biggest difference between then and now is not really the 'progressiveness' of the languages but that the tooling is free. It's nigh-impossible for a non-free language to gain serious traction today. Another important one is some degree of cross-platform capability - also pretty much table stakes today (it helps that the platforms are significantly more homogenous) but less common (and/or pricier) back then.