Raku: A language for gremlins
One way you might arranging programming languages in a 2D space is with two axes:<p>1. How much should the language surprise you?<p>2. When the language does surprise you, should it delight you or horrify you?<p><pre><code>              surprising
                   ^
                   |
                   |
                   |
    delight &lt;------+------&gt; horrify
                   |
                   |
                   |
                   v
              unsurprising
</code></pre>
Only a sadist would deliberately design a language for the top right quadrant, but there are many esoteric languages in there. I think most people tacitly assume that all well-behaved languages belong on the bottom left: the language should rarely suprise you but in the rare case it does, hopefully it&#x27;s a delight.<p>Raku seems to overtly aim for the mostly-unoccupied top left. It&#x27;s like the designers and users (two sets with apparently very large overlap) all think, &quot;Yes, it&#x27;s weird. Isn&#x27;t that grand!&quot;