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Having interacted with both, I can definitely say yes. Post an obvious or basic question to comp.lang.lisp, and enjoy being ripped to shreds.

by apl 16y ago

bphogan 16y ago
This type of attitude is what keeps some aspiring people away. How does a beginner know what an obvious question is? Honestly I'm long past tired of this attitude among developers. When you're really good at something you've been doing for a long time, your definition of hard and easy changes so much. I can say that building web applications with Rails is the easiest way to go, but I've been doing it for almost six years. When I teach a class on Rails to complete newbies, it takes us 8 hours to comfortably get through setting up the environment, writing some basic code, and ending up with little more than a few pages and a scaffold. So when I ask for help from someone who has done significant work with something I want to learn, I'm hoping that they'll remember what it was like when they get started, and not tell me that my questions are "stupid" or "obvious". I may not even know what resources I should have looked at first.
- blue1 16y ago
  I am no lisp expert, and I'm well aware of the legendary cloud of terror and harshness which is said to hover on comp.lang.lisp. However, by lurking there for a while, I came to understand better the reasons of the residents. Here, "obvious" means "I don't even remotely know what I'm talking about, but I find easier to ask stupid questions instead of studying a bit and then ask reasonable questions." The fact is, Common Lisp is a niche language, and one that is not easy to learn (until you want to translate from your-language-of-choice to lisp, which is pointless anyway). Until one wants to dedicate some time digging this wonderful and partly forgotten civilization, there's no sense wasting time with it, either yours or the others'. But if one does his homework, I've found that the quality of the help provided by the community is the highest I've ever seen.

Having interacted with both, I can definitely say yes. Post an obvious or basic question to comp.lang.lisp, and enjoy being ripped to shreds.

by apl 16y ago

Having interacted with both, I can definitely say yes. Post an obvious or basic question to comp.lang.lisp, and enjoy being ripped to shreds.

bphogan 16y ago

This type of attitude is what keeps some aspiring people away. How does a beginner know what an obvious question is? Honestly I'm long past tired of this attitude among developers. When you're really good at something you've been doing for a long time, your definition of hard and easy changes so much. I can say that building web applications with Rails is the easiest way to go, but I've been doing it for almost six years. When I teach a class on Rails to complete newbies, it takes us 8 hours to comfortably get through setting up the environment, writing some basic code, and ending up with little more than a few pages and a scaffold. So when I ask for help from someone who has done significant work with something I want to learn, I'm hoping that they'll remember what it was like when they get started, and not tell me that my questions are "stupid" or "obvious". I may not even know what resources I should have looked at first.

blue1 16y ago
I am no lisp expert, and I'm well aware of the legendary cloud of terror and harshness which is said to hover on comp.lang.lisp. However, by lurking there for a while, I came to understand better the reasons of the residents. Here, "obvious" means "I don't even remotely know what I'm talking about, but I find easier to ask stupid questions instead of studying a bit and then ask reasonable questions." The fact is, Common Lisp is a niche language, and one that is not easy to learn (until you want to translate from your-language-of-choice to lisp, which is pointless anyway). Until one wants to dedicate some time digging this wonderful and partly forgotten civilization, there's no sense wasting time with it, either yours or the others'. But if one does his homework, I've found that the quality of the help provided by the community is the highest I've ever seen.