Your point about the need of certain data structures reminds me of the famous humorous text "Real programmers don't use Pascal", which said: "As all Real Progr

Your point about the need of certain data structures reminds me of the famous humorous text "Real programmers don't use Pascal", which said: "As all Real Programmers know, the only useful data structure is the Array. Strings, Lists, Structures, Sets-- these are all special cases of arrays and can be treated that way just as easily without messing up your programming language with all sorts of complications." The full text is available here and is a recommended read if you have some spare minutes: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html