&gt;  In my experience, the more interesting reasons to choose languages come from the &quot;platform and ecosystem&quot; categories rather than syntax.<p>I agree, but that doesn&#x27;t have anything to do with what I said.  I didn&#x27;t say anything about choosing a language for a particular job, I said what makes programmers prefer a language which is very much syntax.<p>&gt; Javascript: The language isn&#x27;t bad but were it not for being the browser scripting language it never would have gotten so popular and tools like node.js probably wouldn&#x27;t even exist.<p>If it were not for being the browser scripting language, it would not exist, so any reasoning beyond what it might have been otherwise is fallacious as it would not have been at all.<p>&gt; Java: Native language on the powerful JVM.<p>Nope, portability across platforms made it popular.<p>&gt; But picking the right language for a job usually requires going beyond the syntax.<p>Not disputed, but still unrelated to my point which is about syntax.  I&#x27;m discussing syntax, it&#x27;s off topic to and rude to tell me not to discuss syntax which is basically what you&#x27;re doing.