Conceptual Integrity: why it matters and how to get it

In “No Silver Bullet” [1] Frederick Brooks addresses the intriguing question of why some programming languages garner fanatical adherents while others are merely tolerated by their users. Brooks’s answer is that the critical criterion is whether a language has in his words “conceptual integrity”. In this article I try to nail down this nebulous concept and see how it can be used as a guide in language design.