> I'm not sure that the top 10% in any language (by whatever metric you choose to measure overall quality) are going to be significant more or less smart and capable than in any other language.
Eh, I'm fairly sure the top 10% of people who liked the bad old PHP were still fairly moronic. (Facebook gave PHP a nice revamp, so it's a much nicer language these days.)
That's not really the issue though. I said top 10% by some measure of quality. Whether not the top 10% of PHP programmers liked the language is a separate variable from their levels of competence & intelligence as compared to some other language.
Eh, I'm fairly sure the top 10% of people who liked the bad old PHP were still fairly moronic. (Facebook gave PHP a nice revamp, so it's a much nicer language these days.)
For another example, have a look at newLISP. Especially http://www.newlisp.org/MemoryManagement.html
However, I agree with your point on average in general for most languages.