Too many languages

There are thousands of programming languages.

The purpose of a programming language is to express programs. The
purpose of learning programming languages is to build up a toolbox for
reasoning about and synthesizing programs in any one given language.

There are diminishing returns on learning programming languages, and
time is scarce.

Therefore one must select between programming languages to study.

A good selection of languages has both
+ breadth
  + satisfies a number of real world economic needs.
+ focus
  + exploits similarity between languages and incremental learning.
  + some unifying basis

A good member of a particular selection meets a number of the
following criteria:
+ Satisfies one particular school of thought on programming languages.
+ Significant difference from predecessors
+ Significant influence on successors
+ Economically significant
+ Advanced i.e. no direct, established and proven heir.
+ A good language.
  + Easy to express programs with
  + Easy to read programs expressed with
  + Easy to reason about programms expressed with

No one of these criteria are sufficient or even necessary conditions.

A bad member satisfies the opposite criteria.

OH, N IN ADDITION TO UR LAST (GOOD) POINTS, IT SHUD BE NOTED DAT DA PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE ONLY CONTRIBUTES LITTLE TO DIS. WHAT'S MORE IMPORTANT IS HOW DA PROGRAMMING WRITES CODE USING DA LANGUAGE. SURE, DA LANGUAGE HELPS A BIT, BUT GET ONE OF DESE FUCKING STACK BOYS TO WRITE A REASONABLY SIZED PROGRAM, IN A PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE DAT U CONSIDER "EASY TO EXPRESS PROGRAMS WITH", DEN COME BACK N TELL ME DAT EXPRESSIVENESS IS MOSTLY IN THE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE, N NOT MOSTLY IN DA PROGRAMMER.

UR PRETTY MUCH JUST SPEWING SHIT ABOUT A TOPIC DAT DON'T NEED TO HAVE SHIT SPEWED ABOUT IT. ONCE U ACCEPT DAT DA WORLD'S IMPERFECT AND FULL OF SHIT, U MIGHT REALISE WHY PEOPLE OPT FOR SHIT IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER SHIT. IF U REALLY WANT TO CHANGE DA WURLD N PUSH GOOD DESIGN CHOICES, START OFF SMALL BY GETTING JAVA, A LANGUAGE U ACTUALLY ENCOURAGE THE USE OF, TO SUPPORT UTF-8 NATIVELY AND DROP ITS STUPID UTF-16 BULLSHIT.