I wonder if we aren't all missing something. In another mailing list I have been trying to explain to someone how to write a JSON parser in a functional language. If anything unexpected comes up, like an error message, he freezes, then calls the mailing list for help. The error messages will say things like foobar is unused fooBar is undefined and he'll sit there baffled. I know a bright statistician who *hated* programming because of the compiler error messages (for a fairly simple imperative language, too). For *some* novice programmers, the quality of the error messages may be more important than almost anything else, which means that for *them*, the language as such may be almost irrelevant, except indirectly as it makes it easier or harder to generate really clear error messages.