This isn't quite true. Python was certainly Guido's passion project, and it started that way. But early in its life, it was funded by the United States government via CNRI (under Bob Kahn).

At every job Guido had subsequently, he had at least some buy-in to work on Python, and some coworkers were also paid to work on Python.

There was a core "PythonLabs" group (I think including Jeremy Hylton?) that apparently moved from CNRI to the a startup BeOpen:

https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10273876... (I watched this whole video, there's also a couple Lex Fridman videos)

At Google from 2005 to ~2014, Guido nominally had 50% of his time to work on CPython, but that's pretty fuzzy because he was really productive in any case. (I was his officemate for a couple years during that time.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Python

Yes and Python (released in 1991) took a lot more time to become popular compared to Java (released in 1995) which was corporate backed.

Python still seems to have funding issues. For example, JS (backed by multiple big corporations) performance has improved a lot compared to Python. The main Python implementation doesn't have a proper JIT as far as I know.

So it shows the difference between amateur languages and corporate backed languages.

> Yes and Python (released in 1991) took a lot more time to become popular compared to Java (released in 1995) which was corporate backed.

Being corporate backed is the real answer. Languages that became popular through grassroots support are the exception, not the rule.

Even Rust started as a "amateur" language until it was picked up by Rust.

Nothing is saying that Crystal won't be picked up just like Rust was, by some company.

> Even Rust started as a "amateur" language until it was picked up by Rust

?!?

Mozilla maybe?

What a brain fart. Yeah, I meant "picked up by Mozilla", thanks :)