Alan is the most important person alive in Computer Science, showing us -loudly- the way forward, and he's largely ignored. I don't know of a more damning indictment than that.
We jump on what's popular for the sake of being "cool as well." We get hung up on minor syntax differences in languages. Or worse, in some cases we ignore real benefits of syntax simply because we are too lazy to take the week it takes to retrain ourselves to learn it. We fight about editors! Editors!
If all of that wasn't bad enough, the more ignorant we are the more we seem to aggressively champion a given technology and attack others without the backing of any serious thought. We become so attached to our favorite tools that they become beyond criticism of any form.
Well... you get it...
Well, it's still the language from the year 1980. The very fact that you judge a 1980-vintage system as "not bad" compared to existing alternatives is telling in itself. Alan is working on a 2010 version even as we speak. :-)