[smackeyacky]

Brainfuck is not an example, its a strawman. If it was meant to be a joke, it sucks.

I really don't understand the automatic genuflection that lisp/forth/smalltalk get on HN. You can't make a bad programmer better by switching out the language.

I am guessing HN skews younger and never had to build boring production systems in these failures (note: my professional experience was years of fighting smalltalk).

For the vast majority of programming tasks, boring old java or c# or python have enough language features of the holy trinity now that smugly announcing to the world you are a clojure exclusive geek is a huge red flag.

[kazinator]

> You can't make a bad programmer better by switching out the language

Right; good programmer, though, another story.

> boring old java or c# or python

Many programmers using these were switched to them from something else, and in many cases are doing better work because of that.

[smackeyacky]

If they moved on from lisp I'm 100% sure they are now able to do better work, largely because they no longer have to spend their days telling everybody they are a lisp programmer.