Speaking as someone who's happiest with haskell and scheme, I have to say that what he needs to learn is that bad type/macro systems are oppressive, but good o

Speaking as someone who's happiest with haskell and scheme, I have to say that what he needs to learn is that bad type/macro systems are oppressive, but good one's are amazingly powerful and expressive. (As that would be much better than simplistic types = bad but macros in general = good continuum) The question is, how do you develop an aesthetic sense for these without say reading the research literature on both topics? I mean, it suffices to use the good examples of each for a while, pushing their strengths to the limit, but that at best gives folks a one dimensional view of the design of linguistic features, rather than a richer sense of strength, weaknesses, and tradeoffs. As some other folks have mentioned, the other points are sort of irrelevant to the core of C#/++/java et al experience. One point that seems to be missing is the (I think standard) point that interactively testing code by being able to interactively define or execute functions is FANTASTIC for developing, because it facilitates (IMHO) an easier process of evolving the software