Go was, by the author's own admission, a language for the lowest common denominator (the computer science undergrad). In many ways, the computer science undergr

Go was, by the author's own admission, a language for the lowest common denominator (the computer science undergrad). In many ways, the computer science undergrad is less competent than someone with no formal backing at all: it takes less time to teach a new skillset to a blank slate than repair the damage done to undergrads. Rob Pike's hobby is working on an APL interpreter. C# was Microsoft's answer to Java after getting sued for cloning Java. Rust is by C++ devs, for C++ devs. Swift was Apple's successor to Objective-C. Clojure is another language doing the "Lisp but with a bootstrapped ecosystem" thing, by a guy who had been active in the Java, .net, and CL communities. All languages build on something, and when the mainstay languages are all ripping off ALGOL-60, ALGOL-60 clone after ALGOL-60 clone is what you will get. Programming languages are just now starting to become influenced by Prolog despite the benefits of Prolog for certain tasks being apparent; the entire result of the field right now can roughly be traced entirely to UT Austin. The point of the article was not to claim anything about the superiority of k programmers, it was to point out that the rest of the world was extremely close-minded to anything with different syntax in a comical way, along with demonstrating that a common criticism (of which there are many, 99% of which unfounded, as you can see by checking any thread on Hacker News that even briefly touches upon k or APL) was hypocritical, which I think it did a great job at. It was a reference to the Kübler-Ross model, which does seem to apply to people who find APL/J/K at some point.