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Was kind of interested if PG's assertion about Java being for "average" programmers and Lisp (and some other languages) being for "good programmers..."

It seems like there is a trend that way - and C and Haskell are also for "good" programmers.

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Actually, the results showed that there were a much greater range of Java programmer abilities than most other languages. There were more Java programmers in the top 10 than any other language, so asserting that Java is just for 'average' programmers is rather shown up for the baseless snobbery that I rather suspect is PG's basic attitude.

Maybe I'm misrepresenting Graham's remark concerning averageness of languages, but I the 'average' attribute was not assigned to the capabilities of the individual programmer. The point was (among others) that languages with a good "market position" attracts all kind of programmers, from challenged to geek. On the other side you have languages who attract more geeks because the i-have-to-pay-my-mortgage-which-language-should-i-learn group is underrepresented. Which makes for a good filter if you want to hire people. Just like "participating in open source projects" can be a discriminating factor.

The last point could be argued about, but I don't recall language bashing in said essay.

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