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My point is simply that niche languages are harder to hire for and find a job in. Most people aren't okay with that. There is a feedback loop here as less peopl

My point is simply that niche languages are harder to hire for and find a job in. Most people aren't okay with that. There is a feedback loop here as less people use it and less libraries are written. That doesn't mean the language is inferior to Java in any way, but a new developer has to stay relevant by learning languages and frameworks that people use in-house. This is a major reason it isn't popular. I have 300 people in my IT department. They've all heard of Java & C#, but I've never run into anyone who has even heard of Lisp (maybe that is marketing).

PuercoPop 8y ago
You don't have to hire for Lisp, or any language for that matter. Picking up a language is way easier than fundamental skills (statistics for AI for example). IIRC Dan Weinreb of ITA fame said they gave their new hires a copy Practical Common Lisp and two weeks. You know, the book that you dissed earlier in the thread w/o an argument. > less libraries are written. Given that Sturgeon was an optimist[0], that is hardly a problem. The only reason why most OSS libraries are using is because people don't do the due diligence of vetting their dependencies. There are more than enough libraries of adequate quality for common tasks. [0]: “And folks, let’s be honest. Sturgeon was an optimist. Way more than 90% of code is crap.” – Al viro
- FractalLP 8y ago
  Once again, you quote isolated incidents when I'm talking about the entire programming industry. I never said it wouldn't work for some people. It might have been Tarver talking about the Lisp curse. Lisp is so powerful that everyone kind of does their own thing while devs of C++ and Java have to band together and make massive libraries. This is a different argument, but I think your discounting the usefulness of some of the gargantuan libraries and frameworks out there. I'm not saying fundamentals aren't good, but a data scientist doesn't need to know about homoiconicity...they need Numpy/Scypy.

PuercoPop 8y ago

You don't have to hire for Lisp, or any language for that matter. Picking up a language is way easier than fundamental skills (statistics for AI for example). IIRC Dan Weinreb of ITA fame said they gave their new hires a copy Practical Common Lisp and two weeks. You know, the book that you dissed earlier in the thread w/o an argument. > less libraries are written. Given that Sturgeon was an optimist[0], that is hardly a problem. The only reason why most OSS libraries are using is because people don't do the due diligence of vetting their dependencies. There are more than enough libraries of adequate quality for common tasks. [0]: “And folks, let’s be honest. Sturgeon was an optimist. Way more than 90% of code is crap.” – Al viro

FractalLP 8y ago
Once again, you quote isolated incidents when I'm talking about the entire programming industry. I never said it wouldn't work for some people. It might have been Tarver talking about the Lisp curse. Lisp is so powerful that everyone kind of does their own thing while devs of C++ and Java have to band together and make massive libraries. This is a different argument, but I think your discounting the usefulness of some of the gargantuan libraries and frameworks out there. I'm not saying fundamentals aren't good, but a data scientist doesn't need to know about homoiconicity...they need Numpy/Scypy.