Javascript was the only cross-browser scripting language, that's what made it a success. It took almost a decade before Crockford turned up to say 'here's how y

Javascript was the only cross-browser scripting language, that's what made it a success. It took almost a decade before Crockford turned up to say 'here's how you write javascript so it's not a complete pita'. Would javasript shrivel and die if all the browsers released Python support tomorrow? Probably not any more, but 6 years ago, most definitely. Same thing with Ruby, without Rails would it be anywhere now? So half your examples actually show there's something very different going on when trying to explain why languages become popular. What languages have truly emerged without a leg up? Python? PHP as the server-side language? C# emerging ahead of VB.Net? Scheme?