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Re: "their own fault". In one sense, yes, that's true, but this type of reasoning irks me, because you're kind of assuming that the language design is inconsequential -- when it clearly isn't. I could also (somewhat absurdly) also argue that Malbolge[1] is a perfectly reasonable language. After all, if you fully understand Malbolge, it shouldn't be that difficult to write correct programs in it, right?

This is obviously a bit of an Argumentum ad Absurdum, but I think it makes the point pretty well? There are concrete, important differences between languages regarding error-proneness, etc. The reality is that humans are lazy, fallible, etc. and we will make random mistakes, so if we can prevent mistakes (or at least catch them early), then that may be a worthwhile trade-off. Especially for such a trivial case. When was the last time you actually needed "null >= 0" to be true, for example? :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbolge (pleasantly surprised to see that it has a Wiki entry)




Well said. You should write a blog post or something on this topic.




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