Popularity is probably the worst metric for a programming language. Programmers conflate popular for good pretty often. They line up often, but they are orthogo

Popularity is probably the worst metric for a programming language. Programmers conflate popular for good pretty often. They line up often, but they are orthogonal. The original question is loaded. Why not ask "What usually increases a language's popularity? How can these effects be applied to Erlang?" Now the answers are a bit more useful, a bit more constructive: * write more, better docs (Erlang for Java programmers, .. for JS devs, .. Ruby, etc) * polish the websites, improve search rankings for helpful links (the standard library, etc) * write at least one good O'Reilly book * write lots of libraries, especially web frameworks * integrate seamlessly with other platforms (possible with Clojure, maybe not Erlang) * upload screencasts "15 Minutes in Erlang", etc * ...use your imagination Lisp is another prototypical "our language is awesome, why is it dying?". FreeBSD used to get joked on, too. Well la-dee-da, Erlang on FreeBSD can be a winning combination! These technologies will remain good, but they won't magically make themselves popular. It's not if-you-build-it-they-will-come anymore. There are too many programming languages to get acquainted with even 20% of them. Languages need to be more competitive to be more popular.