The hidden twist itself is interesting, but the described features didn't sound like they incorporate any PLT advancements of the past decades, with the first o

The hidden twist itself is interesting, but the described features didn't sound like they incorporate any PLT advancements of the past decades, with the first one indeed reminding of older languages: I thought it's just somebody describing the language bits they like for some reason, and saying that they'd like new languages like that. If they were more convincing, it would be surprising to see that they all were already present in an old and somewhat forgotten language. Though the overall article (and the conclusion in particular) seems to be more about rhetoric than about reasoning. I agree with the conclusion, but it doesn't seem to be backed well with (follow from) the rest of the article.