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The compelling part about pg's lisp "triumphalism" is that he describes how lisp helped him build a better product and add/debug features faster. This author do

by mburney 16y ago

The compelling part about pg's lisp "triumphalism" is that he describes how lisp helped him build a better product and add/debug features faster. This author doesn't address that point -- he's talking about a kind of elitism that one would find in newsgroup flame wars. I (and many others) couldn't care less if a language makes me appear brilliant, but I do care about what advantage that language gives me. (EDIT: I wrote this comment before viewing the link to his previous post where he directly addresses the issue. Still wish he'd elaborate more though on how the abstraction level of a language would not help a programmer do better work. Is it enough to just proclaim "There are no super programming languages, only super programmers" for it to be true?)

mortenjorck 16y ago
I think the author is responding to the self-indulgent "Reddit clone in three lines of lisp!" variety of stunt-programming, where best practices, standards, and readability take a backseat to showing off how much hard-to-read compound logic you can cram into a single line of code. Honestly, I don't have a problem with those, as long as the practices involved in them don't seep into everyday programming.
tensor 16y ago
Still wish he'd elaborate more though on how the abstraction level of a language would not help a programmer do better work. Is it enough to just proclaim "There are no super programming languages, only super programmers" for it to be true?) This is trivially easy to disprove. C vs assembly. Java/C#/Python/Ruby/etc vs C and assembly. Manually creating databases in something like C for every application vs relational databases and SQL. I think it is painfully obvious that we have come a long way due to "triumphalism." Not all ideas bear fruit, but those that do can have a huge impact. His conclusion advocates that we should all simply program in assembly and use good practices. I feel that is an absurd notion.

by mburney 16y ago

mortenjorck 16y ago

I think the author is responding to the self-indulgent "Reddit clone in three lines of lisp!" variety of stunt-programming, where best practices, standards, and readability take a backseat to showing off how much hard-to-read compound logic you can cram into a single line of code. Honestly, I don't have a problem with those, as long as the practices involved in them don't seep into everyday programming.

tensor 16y ago

Still wish he'd elaborate more though on how the abstraction level of a language would not help a programmer do better work. Is it enough to just proclaim "There are no super programming languages, only super programmers" for it to be true?) This is trivially easy to disprove. C vs assembly. Java/C#/Python/Ruby/etc vs C and assembly. Manually creating databases in something like C for every application vs relational databases and SQL. I think it is painfully obvious that we have come a long way due to "triumphalism." Not all ideas bear fruit, but those that do can have a huge impact. His conclusion advocates that we should all simply program in assembly and use good practices. I feel that is an absurd notion.