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0 pointshgsgm3y ago0 comments

Name a popular language without corporate backing.

C was corporate, AT&T.

C++ was corporate, AT&T.

Java was corporate, Sun.

Maybe Perl wasn't corporate. Had a great run but faded.

Python? Maybe, but Guido van Rossum worked at Google and Dropbox for many years.

Ruby? Is popular because Rails, corporate.

JavaScript? Mozilla.

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4 comments · 3 top-level

stonemetal123y ago· 1 in thread

Lisp, and OCaml are about as close as I can get. I would argue Haskell (several of GHC's core team worked at MS though). I would also argue Python was popular before Guido worked at Google. Those 4 all came out of academia though so they had backing just not corporate backing.

pjmlp3y ago

OCaml - INRIA and Jane Street, Facebook, Microsoft research

Lisp - IBM, Xerox, MIT, Apple

Python - CWI, NIST, CNRI, afterwards Guido joined Google in 2000

robryan3y ago

PHP? You could argue Facebook but they mostly went and built their own thing that at best was inspiration of later PHP versions.

As far as I know currently the only real paid full time contributors are from the relatively newly formed PHP foundation.

goodpoint3y ago

Very much Python.

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