APL did catch on to some extent, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39471718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39471718 . Without getting into any dis

APL did catch on to some extent, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39471718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39471718 . Without getting into any discussion of the array paradigm itself, the reason commercial programming is such a winner-take-all system now is hiring and organizational difficulties, not that popular languages are so much more productive than unpopular ones. Building a working application is the easy part of running a business.