&quot;If he start­ed Jorf in 1987, that means he start­ed it around the same time Perl 1.0, (and the syn­tax is much nicer ;-). He start­ed it around the same time Gui­do start­ed Python.&quot;<p>This is quite interesting as it&#x27;s not really clear a better syntax would automatically make it &quot;win&quot; over other languages, or even that it&#x27;s a significant factor. Maybe a prerequisite in most cases, but I think here are a lot of other factors that can be more important:<p>* Surrounding library and tooling and documentation<p>* System requirements to comfortably run it<p>* Initial community<p>* Ability of the author to promote it<p>* The nature of the early adopter individuals and companies (thought experiment: young Mark Zuckerberg sits down one night and proceeds to write thefacebook v0.0.0.0.1 in Perl, not PHP)<p>&quot;So, he became a suit ;-)&quot;<p>I saw the emoticon ... but CTO of a startup != suit in many cases