Recently I started to hear too often ‘but it has too many Parentheses’, of course I’m talking about LISP here. To be precise, a LISP called clojure. And to be honest, it gets boring. I find this a quite lame and actually no argument at all.

And now you think ‘oh he’ll go on arguing why they are good’. No I won’t. I’ll just say they have their place. But mostly I will now rant about why this is such a boring argument, that it is stereotypical. It’s not arguing about a language feature, not even really a syntax (since people who scream ‘ewwww Parentheses’ more often than not don’t take the time to actually explore the syntax.)

But it is different – so it must be bad right? Just like black people must be bad because they are different! There is no reason to actually get to know a black person and judge them on their character because, after all they already look different: ewwww! Now if I’d had said that without the tone of sarcasm and without the context you’d likely call me a racist wouldn’t you? But why do we apply these moral guidelines to people and not to language?

You can pick the one icky characteristic from every language and go scream ‘ewww *’ as a good reason never to take a real look at it. Let me humor you and list a few that just come to mind to help you avoid learning any language ever:

• C – Ewwww pointers!, Ewwww buffer overflows!
• C++ – Ewww not C!
• LISP – Ewww parentheses.
• Ruby – Ewwww sloooooow!
• Python – Ewwww indentation!
• Java – Ewwww too much Objects!
• ASM – Ewwww low level!
• JS – Ewwww browsery!
• PHP – Ewwww PHP! (too much here so I just summarize it)
• VB – Ewwww Microsoft!
• C# – Ewwww even more Microsoft!
• Perl – Ewwww unreadable!
• obj-c – Ewww Apple!
• Delphi – Ewwww Microsoft and dead!
• Pascal – Ewwww old!
• Lua – Ewww not for serious things!
• MATLAB – Ewww too mathy!

Now we’re through nearly all of the top 20 languages, it is clear now that they are all are horrible. I think people should just stop programming altogether! (Note: Those of the top 20 I do not know at all I omitted for the sake of not giving a weak argument.)

Okay now back to being a bit more serious: Do you see where I’m coming from? No language is perfect. Just because there is one feature that strikes you odd, or even just different, stop. Don’t just judge the language when you’ve never used it.

But now I’ve got to clean up my mailbox so I can receive all the complaints from the C, C++, LISP, Ruby, Python, Java, ASM, JS, PHP, VB, C#, Perl, Obj-C, Delphi, Pascal, Lua, and MATLAB community about how unfair I am to pass judgement on their languages.