"Or, people think that a good practical language can only come from using it to solve real problems and iterating on the design. Sitting down and conjuring up the perfect language just does not work."

I agree. It's why that's a false dilemma I'm not promoting. I illustrated a C alternative that iterated out a language and OS better than C/UNIX in a number of metrics. We'd provably have fewer problems like crashes or hacks had we been stuck with that language. Static analysis would've been easier as well given its successor had the first, standard library that was mathematically verified to avoid specific problems.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12316092