[brlewis]

This deserves more discussion. I won't be able to do it justice today, but hope to restart the discussion later, maybe with a comment on your blog.

[lisper]

You might want to read this:

http://rondam.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-are-programming-lang...

(Submitted to HN -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2314572 -- but it died with a whimper.)

[brlewis]

Yes, that's where I would reply.

Unfortunately I'm not surprised it died. It's better thought out than the original Usenet posting, but less controversial.