I think it depends on what you want to achieve. If the goal is to quickly create solutions for complex problems, then it helps if the language (as a means to an

I think it depends on what you want to achieve. If the goal is to quickly create solutions for complex problems, then it helps if the language (as a means to an end) already provides ready-made "features" that you can fall back on. Of course, not everyone will need all of them, but only a subset for his or her domain. I'm thinking of the scientific community, where C++ is very common and almost more like a DSL. Here the finished program is used as a tool for a task, which itself is the final product. So the coding itself is "only" a (sometimes annoying) preliminary stage. You don't want to build important language constructs yourself first from minimalist elementary building blocks. It may be different for professional programmers, whose programs often have a different purpose, are created by multiple developers, and have much more effort put into reusable, clean code. Here, the code base is more the product than the finished program.