> A couple of years ago I had breakfast with Guido van Rossum -- he almost left the table when I told him I was an academic PL researcher -- and I was quite imp

> A couple of years ago I had breakfast with Guido van Rossum -- he almost left the table when I told him I was an academic PL researcher -- and I was quite impressed with the way he dismissed all mathematical aspects of the study of programming languages but was almost exclusively focussed on "soft" aspects of usability such as concrete syntax. I know next to nothing about academic PL research, but this tells me enough. I know that Haskell is an academic language, and it's a good language. But then Python is a good language too, and it's apparently almost anti-academic! Anyway, the author seems to have good ideas about where programming language research should be directed. Hopefully someone can one day find a great combination of rigor and usability in a language. Until then I'm left wondering which of the 5-10 good languages that I know I should use for a new project (or whether I should learn X this time).