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Programming languages are standalone products, that can evaluated regardless of their environment. For example, anyone reasonable can see that is brainfuck is a

• batista 14y ago
  >Programming languages are standalone products, that can evaluated regardless of their environment. Only in some abstract way, that is of no consequence to the practice of programming. Because in the real world the environment very much matters, and the best proof that "it works and gives results" it to see it, er, working and giving results. >For example, anyone reasonable can see that is brainfuck is a deeply flawed language regardless of the applications written it. Only the C/Lisp issue is not that trivial. Brainfuck was designed to be "deeply flawed", whereas C/Lisp were designed to have different, specific, constraints and strengths. Or, reversely, it is because there are NO applications written in in brainfuck that we can safely deduce that it has some problems (empirical observation). If hundreds of killer apps were written in it we would have to reexamine our assumptions about it (but of course, it would have to be a different language for that). So cause and effect are lined in a feedback circle in these evaluations. >If you cannot evaluate a language on its own merits, there is really no point in talking to you about this. Languages are not works of art. They are tools. Tools are not to be evaluated "on their own merits", they are to be evaluated by their results.