Don't forget Basic! Lot of people learned to program with it, and did cool things with it, in the times of 8-bit computers. And it is still used, from DarkBasic

Don't forget Basic! Lot of people learned to program with it, and did cool things with it, in the times of 8-bit computers. And it is still used, from DarkBasic and similars, to MS' variations on VisualBasic (VBA and such). You can make smart, high level languages like Haskel or Ceylon, but people will generally prefer dumb, easy to learn languages like Basic, PHP or JavaScript, despites their limitations. Result: instead of making a nice car, well designed and looking good, they put big wheels and powerful engine on soap box cars! :-)