Not historically true. Python didn't take off for years after the initial release in 1991. Even in the mid 2000s people were evangelising Python like it was a new thing (https://xkcd.com/353/)
Or take Rust, which has gained adoption more recently. It took a while to get going after the 1.0 release in 2015. If you look at daily downloads of Rust crates (https://lib.rs/stats) as a proxy for adoption:
- 2015 to 2017 - not many downloads
- 2018 - first signs of real growth, reaches 1M per day.
- 2018 to 2021 - 10x growth, 10M per day
- 2021 to 2024 - 10x growth (projected)
So new languages shouldn't lose hope if they don't see adoption immediately. It's possible that they might be adopted later. But for language authors, it's the hope that kills you. You continue working on it even if maybe you shouldn't.
Sure, let me define "shouldn't". For those authors who hope to see their language become mainstream and achieve widespread adoption, they may want to cut their losses. If they're working on it for intrinsic reward they should continue, by all means.
Or take Rust, which has gained adoption more recently. It took a while to get going after the 1.0 release in 2015. If you look at daily downloads of Rust crates (https://lib.rs/stats) as a proxy for adoption:
- 2015 to 2017 - not many downloads
- 2018 - first signs of real growth, reaches 1M per day.
- 2018 to 2021 - 10x growth, 10M per day
- 2021 to 2024 - 10x growth (projected)
So new languages shouldn't lose hope if they don't see adoption immediately. It's possible that they might be adopted later. But for language authors, it's the hope that kills you. You continue working on it even if maybe you shouldn't.