Modula-2 was definitely a niche language. Back in the late 1980s I wrote an add-on to a commercial Modula-2 library that earned me a few bucks. Literally, a few bucks. I used Logitech's Modula-2 compiler, which I don't remember being slow, but Turbo C and Turbo Pascal were far more popular, likely because of their fast compilation speed.