It's one problem and those are two more, but I would argue these problems look minor compared to the obstacles standing in front of some other languages.

It seems the HN community tends to over-value language design and under-value low barriers to adoption.

If I'm picking a language for a new project, I don't care about barriers to adoption, as long as they're low enough that I and anyone else I'm trying to work with can get through them. I do care about the language having at least something vaguely resembling reasonable behavior.

Why would I optimize for barriers to adoption? I don't need my language of choice to be popular to get away with using it, especially if I'm building one of those Web thingers everyone likes to make these days.

What I do need is a language I can be productive in. All else being equal, the less a language surprises me with inconsistent or outright broken behavior, the more productive I can be with it.

From http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html:

"Robert and I both knew Lisp well, and we couldn't see any reason not to trust our instincts and go with Lisp. We knew that everyone else was writing their software in C++ or Perl. But we also knew that that didn't mean anything. If you chose technology that way, you'd be running Windows. When you choose technology, you have to ignore what other people are doing, and consider only what will work the best."

So, yes: I can't speak for everyone, but I would rather use a well designed language with poor adoption than a poorly designed language that's been widely adopted.