What qualities do you look for in a programming language? What are the positive characteristics you look for in a language that might make it more worth learning, or using, than another? What are the short, boolean questions you can ask to get a sense of these characteristics?

I speak of the qualities of a programming language in and of itself, qua programming languages, not their popularity or IDE availability (unless there's a quality of the language that makes IDE availability a characteristic of the language itself).

For instance, some of the things Perl taught me to look for in a programming language are:

I suppose what I'm asking for boils down to a list of "Can your language do this?" comparisons. I ask not because I have some kind of language advocacy agenda, but simply because I want to know what characteristics of language design people find valuable, and why -- and I'm always on the lookout for something new to learn about programming.

print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);
 - apotheon
CopyWrite Chad Perrin

In reply to What do you use as a language litmus? by apotheon

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