[zidar]

Call me crazy, but I like the pumping lemma

"It has an ferociously intimidating logical structure, with no fewer than five alternating quantifiers ... If two are a struggle, five is cruelty".

Seriously, if you're planing on using the pumping lemma you should also be able to read and understand those five quantifiers. It's not "just the lemma", it's also the ability to read that and understand it that has some value in itself. Go on then to the pumping lemma for context free languages. I don't know about you but learning how to read the lemma and understand it, helped me understand the lemma for CFG really quickly.

Knowledge is always good, and if you have to learn something else to get the lemma too, then that's even better and what do you know maybe one day you'll have to know how to read a complex statement with quantifiers and not the pumping lemma.

[mcguire]

Plus, any alternative (Language derivatives? Really?[1]) is going to have an uphill public relations struggle, at least unless they too have a name that sounds vaguely obscene.

[1] I like them a lot, but are they really less cruel than the pumpster?