I don't think anyone is making a case for any given language being without quirks, but I think it's highly relevant how easy it is to stumble upon them. If the

I don't think anyone is making a case for any given language being without quirks, but I think it's highly relevant how easy it is to stumble upon them. If the quirks reside mostly in parts of the language only touched in really advanced expert use, it's generally not a problem because the people who venture there will know what to look out for. If your language has a quirky while statement on the other hand, it's something everyone will trip over. E.g. Python's default mutable argument thing is fairly common to trip over (but on the other hand the behaviour is consistent and predictable once you know it), but monkey-patching builtins is not quite as common and definitely in the realm of "don't touch unless you know what you're doing".