> The classic "blub" post by Paul Graham is usually read in "upwards" direction where people using a language without some abstractions (say, monads or borrow checkers) can't understand why they would need it when looking at a language that has them. There is probably also a "downwards" interpretation where people using such a language can no longer understand that it's possible to be productive in languages that lack the advanced abstractions.

Thank you, this is a very helpful framing of something I've recently been struggling to articulate about languages with sophisticated type systems after having surprisingly positive and productive experiences with Clojure and Go.