Why do people develop emotional attachments for programming languages?

Posted by Andrew Heath on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Andrew Heath
Published on 2010-04-14T22:41:24Z Indexed on 2010/04/14 22:43 UTC
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Aside from people who actually developed the languages, I really don't get how someone can develop passion/attachment/perhaps even obsession for a programming language... yet not a day goes by that I don't see a programmer exhibiting this behavior on the internet.

I understand how people can feel this way regarding spoken languages - but there's a whole boatload of culture, history, etc that come attached with them. By comparison, the "Python Culture" (as an example) is so small as to be wholly insignificant.

Does everyone have a language they love?
Am I the odd one out? The dirty polygamist?
Are these people rational or silly?

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