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OK, basically the argument boils down to "if you have to write a webapp and don't know how to program in Lisp or PHP, you'd be better choosing PHP". It's very
by bonaldi 16y ago
OK, basically the argument boils down to "if you have to write a webapp and don't know how to program in Lisp or PHP, you'd be better choosing PHP".
It's very close to trite. Yes, PHP is easier to learn. But if you're already proficient with Lisp, would you still be faster learning PHP? And if you are not up to speed with lisp, why the hell would you even be considering it for a time-sensitive quick-n-dirty job?
The question he set out with was "why is PHP more popular"? His answer is "because it's easier to learn and more popular".
- jbooth 16y agoWell, it's more than trite, because a lot of very smart people run off distracted by shiny things like Lisp. I remember writing Scheme in Scheme in under 500 lines in college! It was so elegant! I still have a Clojure book on my shelf, read almost the whole thing, got emacs off the ground with SLIME a few times, and haven't actually solved a business problem with it. I have existing code bases in Python and Java, and I can create way bigger wins by fixing the obviously wrong things with them than by bolting on some component in Clojure and creating a new area of "nobody knows what happens here". Mayyyyyybe if you have specific needs then a lisp is a good idea -- if you're in a green field situation, have sufficiently complex application logic to justify an unusual web setup (this is much more rare than people think), and either know what you're doing with lisp and/or have a long timeline to figure out what you're doing. But it's pretty uncommon, and as awesome and elegant as LISP is, it's refreshing to see someone writing from everyday experience rather than "this is cool!" once in a while.