From a technological point of view Joomla has always been ahead of the curve compared to many others. That’s not from any desire to be first to offer support for x but comes more from Joomla’s volunteer structure.
Developers want to work on “new stuff” and when everyone is a volunteer no one can make anyone work on something that they are not interested in. At the same time no one wants to reinvent the wheel and simply copy a feature from another CMS.
You always want to be working on something new. That’s where the challenge comes from and everyone likes the feeling of successfully creating something new or creating something old but with a new twist using new technology.
I’ve mentioned before that Joomla is 100% volunteer - perhaps it’s the largest organisation of this type. There is also no corporate backer or commercial offering which is also pretty unique.
At the beginning there were many software projects of a similar size that existed in this “hippy” ecosphere but today Joomla might be one of the last. This is something that personally I will fight very hard to maintain but everyday there are new pressures to change.