We often act as if the test of a language were how good finished programs look in it. It seems so convincing when you see the same program written in two languages, and one version is much shorter. When you approach the problem from the direction of the arts, you’re less likely to be taken in by this sort of test. You don’t want to end up with a programming language like marble — a beautiful medium for finished ideas, but a painful medium for developing them.

— Design and Research

Yay Paul Graham.