I'm backing WAHa up on this one: for the last week, I've been attempting to understand the whole concatenative language paradigm. None of the Forth tutorials I've read can offer up a good reason why stack-based mental gymnastics are better than letting the compiler do all that work. I've made inquiries at concatenative language lists, and the only answers I've gotten have been:

a) Expand your mind! (with nothing to back that statement up), or
b) Forth allows you to micromanage the stack for effiency (which is funny, because the "blazing fast" GForth compiler is usually about an order of magnitude slower than C over at the Great Computer Language Shootout).

The final straw came when, whil reading "Thinking Forth", the definitive Forth book, the author proceeds to demonstrate something that "could only be done in Forth!" that could have just as easily been done in C with pointers fifteen years ago.

Fleh.