> rather than as unbecoming and, frankly, immature. It's natural and normal for young people, I think. It's easy to be entranced by some idea when you're in yo

> rather than as unbecoming and, frankly, immature. It's natural and normal for young people, I think. It's easy to be entranced by some idea when you're in your teens and early twenties. Older programmers, if they stay active and not transition to management, early retirement, or get burned out and switch careers completely, tend not to be that dogmatic about the tools they use. I wonder what is the percentage of programmers below 30 years old in all active programmers? On the other hand, getting dogmatic, cult-like even, is sometimes the only reasonable strategy for a language to survive. Languages that offer capabilities way beyond mainstream (which is not that hard...) often have a small, but very dedicated following. The people there have to believe their language is so much better than the others, because otherwise they'd have to admit that the amount of time and effort they pour into it is unreasonable. Such communities are allergic to posts saying that "another language also has this" or "you can do the same in language/tool X", and they demand a level of dedication which, for outsiders, is just creepy. But, without that, the whole project, the language and ecosystem, would simply die, and more often than not that would be a real loss for the programming world. It's hard to interact with such groups as a non-believer, but without them some of the great ideas of the past wouldn't be preserved, and some great new ideas wouldn't be implemented. So, I think in some cases the fanboyism is a rational stance to take. In most cases, though, it's just immature expression of fascination, and then it indeed serves no real purpose, other than annoying more experienced devs.