I took Brian Harvey's SICP course, what I didn't realize until I read this article is that I was in the first class he taught in 1987. I remember helping a friend in the course. We stared at five lines of code while I tried to explain it, he had a really hard time with it (some type of recursion I assume). I still hold the lesson from that tutor session. Write code to be easily read by the average joe. Python, Ruby, etc are great because they are easier to read by more people. Languages are about people not machines. p.s. I am still writing code today, and loving it.