Web is the low-hanging fruit. Take a nice-looking language, add a web framework, and developers can instantly do something useful in a language they like. And a

Web is the low-hanging fruit. Take a nice-looking language, add a web framework, and developers can instantly do something useful in a language they like. And as you say, it's a widespread need, so even a percentage of that attention is quite a few people. I think if a language really nailed a niche, especially a lucrative one like scientific/numeric computing, it could be successful on those merits alone, because it would get a large percentage of that niche.