Newbie response, was Re: Why is Python popular, while Lisp and Scheme aren't?

[Anton Vredegoor]

On Mon, 11 Nov 2002 19:55:27 -0800, Terry Hancock
<hancock at anansispaceworks.com> wrote:

<snip some great insights into newbie psychology>

>Professional programmers who are in it for the money, will benefit by making 
>their language of choice seem difficult. This causes a barrier to entry, 
>creates scarcity, and drives the salaries for those who are *in* up.  You see 
>this behavior frequently in the languages of choice for proprietary software 
>development (and it's been around in many trades, long before software was 
>invented).

There's a lot of truth in this, as in the other part's of your -
greatly appreciated - post, but I would like to add that it's often
not possible for language designers to design a language that is not
*considered* difficult and that is also not difficult in a more
objective sense. We are living in a world where drinking brown colored
and fizzling water with added sugar and artifical taste producing
chemicals out of an aluminium (!) can is considered to be more natural
than just drinking water.

Regards,
		Anton.