> Darcs, at least, broke new ground. It was a very innovative VCS.
Innovative does not mean valuable, or, more important, popular.
I proposed the theory that languages become popular because they make creating new things possible and/or easier.
If Darcs qualifies as such a new thing, the fact that it didn't help popularize haskell argues against my theory.
Maybe my theory is wrong. (I'd certainly patch it in certain ways.) Maybe Darcs doesn't qualify. Maybe Darcs didn't do the trick because no one knows about it.
So, let's flip the question. What has the Haskell community done that has been important in making other languages popular in the past? If they're not doing any of those things, why should Haskell nevertheless become popular? (Note that lots of "superior" languages never became popular, so if you're going that route, you get to explain why Haskell will be different.)
I think that Darcs did help draw attention to Haskell, just that it's still not especially popular. The fact that we're talking about Haskell and not e.g. Joy says something about it at least crossing a low threshold of popularity, though.
(XMonad is a much less significant example for Haskell's popularity, IMHO.)
It seems highly likely to me that Haskell's type system made inventing Darcs's theory of patches significantly easier. While a Darcs-like system could be written in C, designing the system as a whole was almost certainly aided greatly by Haskell's type checking and lightening of certain conceptual burdens through laziness.
Innovative does not mean valuable, or, more important, popular.
I proposed the theory that languages become popular because they make creating new things possible and/or easier.
If Darcs qualifies as such a new thing, the fact that it didn't help popularize haskell argues against my theory.
Maybe my theory is wrong. (I'd certainly patch it in certain ways.) Maybe Darcs doesn't qualify. Maybe Darcs didn't do the trick because no one knows about it.
So, let's flip the question. What has the Haskell community done that has been important in making other languages popular in the past? If they're not doing any of those things, why should Haskell nevertheless become popular? (Note that lots of "superior" languages never became popular, so if you're going that route, you get to explain why Haskell will be different.)