> The goal of programming languages is to execute instructions on the machine.
The goal of a general purpose programming language is to communicate a program from one human to another, and from one human today to the same human tomorrow, while understanding that a program is only written once, but read many times. -- In that goal it is no different from a natural language. -- This goal needs to be optimized for within the constraint that programs must also compile and execute in the way and with the outcomes that a human reading the code would expect.
Your observation about Brainfuck makes my point for me: If the execution was the actual goal, then Brainfuck would be as good a programming language as Rust, Zig, or Nim; but that clearly isn't the case.
The goal of a general purpose programming language is to communicate a program from one human to another, and from one human today to the same human tomorrow, while understanding that a program is only written once, but read many times. -- In that goal it is no different from a natural language. -- This goal needs to be optimized for within the constraint that programs must also compile and execute in the way and with the outcomes that a human reading the code would expect.
Your observation about Brainfuck makes my point for me: If the execution was the actual goal, then Brainfuck would be as good a programming language as Rust, Zig, or Nim; but that clearly isn't the case.