I like your reply.  
I guess my requirements for a real language differ from yours.  
You right: experienced programmer does not care what language is
written in except it has to have enough functionality to do the
job.  "It is easier to *just* program then program around limitations."

When it comes to VB and Perl it seems there is a large number of 
new programmers coding in these language.  
People who do not know much about the standards, techniques and
quality of design and documentation.  

I have noticed the colleges set up VB classes to be prerequisites to C/C++ 
classes.  They also do not spend much time explaining techniques 
and structured programming.  Most of the time spend in class in
a community college was taken by learning the syntax and not the
programming techniques.



***I bet, for any language, you can construct an arbitrarily ugly
***example, where ugly is either in readability, maintainability,
***obfuscation, abuse of concepts, or a combination thereof.

I agree you can create some ugly code in any language.

***#define private public

***Or the horrific:

***#define define ....

These constructs can be used in any code.  cpp (c preprocessor) can be
used to format other files and other languages.

***Ah, the much touted 'do the right thing' functionality.  [Now if we
***could only get a politician to have that...]  It depends, I guess, on
***what you think a programming language is for and how you rate it and
***what you're trying to do with it.  
C allows for ugly programming too but it is powerful and functional enough
to 
make look nice.  I am not trying to limit programming I just like
functionality
which allows for the programmers to limit themselves.  I am not a supporter
of
legislating programming standards either.


FWIW, I have four categories of programming:

1) Trivial.  Simple is as simple does.
2) Moderate.  Can be complex, but is maintainable.
3) Spaghetti.  Can be simple, but poorly thought out.  Typically
	       moderate level of difficulty or higher with poorly
	       thought out steps.
4) Gordian Knot.  Don't ask questions as to why I have a category 4.

I like your categories however it is missing one:
1/2) MODULAR combination of the first and the second one.


The Wolf