That's a biiiiiig ask. Absolutely massive. The fact that there is some Linux movement in supporting rust in the kernel shows it is largely successful. While you're right it doesn't rise up to "show me the apps" criticism, it is a big win.

"Show me the apps" is not a criticism that you CAN write apps in it. All I'm saying is that something is culturally wrong, because the people that want to write practical, useful, mass-market software choose NOT to use functional programming, even though it has allegedly massive advantages and superiority.

The lisp essay by Paulie guy is informative: it enabled a really smart programmer to outscale a team of programmers, but it hit its limits. It did not scale beyond that, and was, I suppose, too inscrutable to be picked up and supported by others.

So was it Lisp that allowed him to compete for a while? Or the fact that he wrote it and knew it top to bottom and was really really smart and motivated? Probably a bit of both, I personally would argue 80% superprogrammer, 20% language.