[vacuity]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29228427

A thread going into what Knuth meant by that quote that is usually shortened to "premature optimization is the root of all evil". Or, to rephrase it: don't tire yourself out climbing for the high fruit, but do not ignore the low-hanging fruit. But really I don't even see why "scripting languages" are the particular "high level" languages of choice. Compilers nowadays are good. No one is asking you to drop down to C or C++.

[Cthulhu_]

I think (personal opinion / belief) Go hits that sweet spot; it's an "easy" language, but compiles down to a binary instead of e.g. Java, C#, JS etc.

Mind you I'm sure there were similar attempts at a language with those goals, but they didn't have the backing of Google.