Absolutely. Hence, thought experiment and aliens. Having programmers explore in a (to them) really weird language (like Prolog or Haskell) and seeing what they

Absolutely. Hence, thought experiment and aliens. Having programmers explore in a (to them) really weird language (like Prolog or Haskell) and seeing what they come up with might be a good approximation, though. I may never have thought of difference lists, but then Prolog made them seem obvious. :)