[Supermancho]

> We have no theoretical method for determining which design philosophy is better than the other.

We do have a theoretical method. It's the scientific method. Other than that, I'm largely of the same thinking. Also, confusing language implementation with overall design is a major source of confusion (eg Java vs OOP vs Erlang vs FP vs Haskell, etc)

How to measure "better" and how the data is interpreted, are the major stopping points to improving software language usability. There have been some attempts (re: Quorum). Classic OOP (inheritance, et al) is simpler to use than mixins for many projects. So now we have to worry about project size as another axis. Then we have to address the issue of median developer effort. What about memory? How do you weigh FP allocate-stack-as-a-for-loop vs reduced mutability? It's more complex than FP good OOP bad.