I’ve been disillusioned with programming languages for a long while. I started coding in the 70s and more than 30 years later here I am in a funk about programming languages, but I do see rays of light. First, let me tell you about the languages I like: C Pascal Algol Lisp Prolog Scheme Python Clojure Arc Smalltalk And that’s not a complete list, just those languages I most like, including some modern ones. But here’s a list of languages I absolutely hate. C++ Cobol Java Objective-C Common Lisp And why do I hate them? Verbosity and ugly syntax, primarily. Either one, the other, or a hideous combination of the two. And it’s the rise of languages such as C++ and Java that I more or less no longer program. I just can’t see myself being impeded in my progamming by the verbosity of the language. I want to write small, tight code with the least amount of interference from the language syntax and semantics. To me, it all went wrong when we went from C to C++ and then onto Java. Each one in turn uglier and more verbose than the last. But things started to change recently. I’ve
