When was the last time you heard something about zlib? At a certain point - libraries are basically done. They are widely distributed, everyone knows what they are, there is no reason to talk about them but they are still maintained and heavily used.

Libraries can be done, but that has got nothing to do with momentum. Momentum depends on mindshare, on the willingness of people to use and to keep using it. Most programmers don't choose technology based purely on merits, they choose it based on "I heard X talk about Y and s/he said good things, so I guess I'll use it". We programmers aren't as rational as we think.

Like it or not, popularity and momentum are important merits of a technology. They lead to all sorts of benefits, like healthy maintenance and further development, better documentation, and support when you run into trouble. It is rational to consider these things when choosing technology.

This morning when I used it.

I don't use zmq nearly has much.

I'm using it for a project now. It's a bit weird, but it does work. Cool thing: you can slot a file descriptor into the zmq provided poll ... point is that you can poll on both zmq and sockets in the one loop.

Pro Tip: Use 'cbor' for serialising.

> you can poll on both zmq and sockets in the one loop

Which is magnificent. The ZMQ poller is tons of fun. (Although I think this doesn't work on Windows.)

Thanks for the tip. In which language(s) do you use CBOR? I want to like it, but the various C APIs look a bit cumbersome and lacking docs.

Python 3.