This is a very good article. I do like Yaron Minsky's line, dismissing generally programming-student-based studies rather evocatively: "there is no pile of soph

This is a very good article. I do like Yaron Minsky's line, dismissing generally programming-student-based studies rather evocatively: "there is no pile of sophomores high enough to prove anything". That being said, the idea that a programming language is a user interface and might be primarily evaluated like one, rather than a cult object to be venerated, is intriguing. If half the effort that has been put into ever-more-esoteric type theory had been put into serious long-term studies (perhaps with non-sophomore populations?) of usability, we might know rather more and might be able to design better languages. My suspicion is that very few researchers would be willing to follow UI-driven PL research wherever it leads; at best it might skewer some sacred concepts, at worst it might lead to a bunch of inconclusive statistical hints. Far better to stick a bone through your beard and declare your chosen flavor of { functional programming, type theory, OO, logic programming, ... } the winner.