> I apologize for my lack of writing skills and apparent > deficiencies in my thinking faculties, since you leave out > specifics I'll have to assume that you

> I apologize for my lack of writing skills and apparent > deficiencies in my thinking faculties, since you leave out > specifics I'll have to assume that you meant all of it. That was me being less than civil and less than constructive, I actually had edited my comments just before you posted this response. My apologies. > but I'm allowed to speak my mind. Oh, absolutely, but I'm also allowed to point out that nothing you said will advance the state of dialog forward and is little more than bemoaning that sometimes individuals go overboard from helpful criticism to unhelpful criticism. Just complaining that criticism exists really doesn't help anyone. Arguing for less of it, by the way, doesn't help anyone either. Arguing for better criticism is valid in my mind, but I don't feel like you did that here. And if you had, I would also have appreciated seeing you actually lay out a cogent and reasonable argument on what you felt was better criticism and how to achieve it. In my mind we'd be much better served here with an article entitled "How to criticize a language right" or something along those lines. > The suggestion was to analyze those languages that we > apparently despise and to find their 'good bits' so we > can implement those in other languages. Ah, this is not an unreasonable suggestion, but I took what you wrote to mean that you thought people should stop ever being negative about languages and only ever focus on the positives and to me that's just not right. I think any approach that advocates better criticism that doesn't allow someone to just be critical if they desire is flawed. Sure, when one can be balanced and review both the ups and downs of a language, that's nice. But I think it must remain perfectly valid for someone to simply focus on the areas they see as needing improvement. Especially in the cases where that person feels that the areas where the language is good have already been covered, are already evident or have been covered by people better equipped to cover them. (Unfortunately not everyone is equipped to point out both good sides and downsides to everything. Sometimes a specific person's view will yield interesting insight on the downsides of a language without yielding anything but relatively uninteresting insights about its upsides.)