Well, first we should have a reason to believe keeping them out is a good thing. But my point is that even if it would be some advantage, the overall cost is t

Well, first we should have a reason to believe keeping them out is a good thing. But my point is that even if it would be some advantage, the overall cost is too great. Having a bad API and a steep learning curve is a bad thing for everybody, good or bad. Even an experienced programmer would do more in the same amount of time if he had better tools. Case in point: most good programmers these days work in high level languages like ruby, lisp, python etc. They enjoy diversity, and they enjoy power. What advantage would be if you forced them to write C++? They would still be better (maybe even more so...) then the average, but the total productivity would be way lower.