Language design

[Greg Munt <greg#uni-corn,demon.co.uk>]

I seem to remember that someone (Jeff Kesselman, I think) stated that when 
designing a language, they always went via one of two routes:

   1. The language is tightly-bound to the task at hand
   2. The language is very generic in nature

What are the (dis)advantages of each? I suspect that a non-generic 
language would not be too extensible (and may cause problems if it went 
on to a public ftp-able release), what are your opinions on this? A 
generic language with libraries for specific purposes seems better than 
tying everything to the language itself, but this is pretty much 'the C/C++ 
route'; I'm anxious to avoid making decisions solely on the basis of 
"It's all I know."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MORON n.  Adult whose mental development corresponds to that of a normal 
          average child between the ages of 8 and 12; (colloq.) very stupid 
          person.