I think part of this problem is that people want to invent compact, 'small' languages, and leave the rest to libraries. This kind of thinking is what makes it h

I think part of this problem is that people want to invent compact, 'small' languages, and leave the rest to libraries. This kind of thinking is what makes it hard to move up, because it is just a variation on "our language is ASM, if you want fancy stuff, just write it as a library in ASM." Language design should be about saving the end programmer from having to do extra work, not minimizing your core language and deferring the savings for later. Of course, there is some push-and-pull here, because we want to make languages small so that they are comprehensible. So what we want are the smallest possible languages that can express a broad array of powerful abstractions with minimal effort. This is why I hate the "no language is the best" line of thought. (Which is similar to "ever language uses design patterns.") There is no theoretical reason why there can't be a best language. All we have is a history of languages that suck to look at. You can't infer that all possible languages suck at something from our short history of terribleness. It is 2015. What kind of languages will people be using in 4015? How about 14015? Are they going to be saying "It doesn't matter what language you use?"