Besides all the C-bashing, I think it's hard to take a paper seriously when it first notes that some syntax seems to spread "memetically" between languages, suc

Besides all the C-bashing, I think it's hard to take a paper seriously when it first notes that some syntax seems to spread "memetically" between languages, such as square brackets for indexing and then turns around and complains about that, since it makes it harder to use knowledge you already have, such as subscripting for indexing (as in math). At least some leeway for the differences in typography would be sensible there, in my opinion. Source code is "linear" basic text, and expressing subscripting which is a typographical feature is not directly possible, so I think it's rich to judge language designers based on that. EDITS: Spelling, grammar.