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It's this friendly, open attitude to new young programmers that has made Lisp as popular as it is today. I can't wait to see this person's algebra textbook. "I

It's this friendly, open attitude to new young programmers that has made Lisp as popular as it is today. I can't wait to see this person's algebra textbook. "Integral calculus is so old and boring, puleezz. Wake me up when you've rediscovered quaternions." And people wonder how PHP can be so popular. I could spend all day enumerating PHP's faults, but when people who have never written an X before build an X in PHP, the PHP community welcomes them with smiles, not sneers. I wish, I really do, that one percent of one percent of the world's programmers had actually implemented a simple Lisp in Lisp, let alone reached the point where such a thing seemed boring. But lecturing us on our lameness is not going to help.

brlewis 16y ago
Comment by the author of the article: @fogus: Hm, lucky you, I've never met a Lisp I did like ;) Don't measure a community by its detractors. Further, people don't wonder why PHP is popular. Its popularity originated in ISP-friendliness, and has grown since then through network effects. EDIT: People are still voting up the parent comment, so I probably wasn't clear enough: the parent comment is totally wrong, starting with the words "It's this". The attitude of someone who does not like Lisp is not even a single datapoint, much less evidence, as to how the Lisp community treats newbies.
- Semiapies 16y ago
  He may be a detractor, but the attitude is similar.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  "Totally wrong"? I apologize for opening with some black humor that has obviously touched a nerve, but once you delete my hyperbolic opening sentence I'll defend the rest of the sentences. I guess I didn't realize that I needed to explictly call out the existence of friendly, helpful, newb-friendly Lisp teachers on Paul Graham's Hacker News as implemented in Arc -- it is easy to forget that not everybody is steeped in the local culture -- but let me now be more explicit: There are plenty of people who are happy to help teach newbs all about higher-order programming by helping them implement their very own toy version of Lisp, and by taking joy in the results. Thank god for those people.
  - brlewis 16y ago
    I actually agree with your 2nd and 4th paragraphs, but yes, 1 and 3 touched a nerve. The newbie-unfriendly reputation of the Lisp community has never been entirely deserved. It pains me to see it repeated.
- davidmathers 16y ago
  No, you misunderstood the comment. http://axisofeval.blogspot.com/2010/08/three-principles-of-lisp.html http://axisofeval.blogspot.com/2010/08/three-principles-of-l... One of the author's projects is writing a lisp. edit- actually it's right there at the top of the page on the right. Motivation: Lisp.
  - brlewis 16y ago
    That's not "Motivation: Lisp". Read the fine print: "by the people who didn't bring you A.I." Yes, he has a project to build his own Lisp, because he doesn't like existing ones. That's a detractor.
    - davidmathers 16y ago
      Touche. On the other hand he calls Common Lisp one of "the few acceptable dynamic languages." http://axisofeval.blogspot.com/2010/07/c-40-industrial-response-to-lisp.html http://axisofeval.blogspot.com/2010/07/c-40-industrial-respo... In other words: CL sucks but all the other dynamic languages suck more. My semantics don't label that as "detraction" but yours may differ.
      - brlewis 16y ago
        Given the full quote I still call it detraction: "What's more worrying is that all dynlangs, including the few acceptable ones, like Common Lisp and Factor, are starting to look horribly dated against C#. Seriously."
omouse 16y ago
You're assuming that popularity is a good thing.
swannodette 16y ago
Every community needs people that are congratulatory as well as those that are critical. Lispers love their language. But they are also self-critical and open-minded. They tend to work hard to see how ideas in other programming languages can be properly integrated into their own. Other programming languages and communities could benefit from such self-criticism.
cemerick 16y ago
The character of Lisp communities is all over the map, since each particular implementation has its own. It's not as if someone that picks up Racket is going to waltz into #clojure looking for help, advice, or reinforcement. So, of course there are some Lisp communities that regularly have a quorum of asshats, and we all know which ones those are (in general terms, perhaps). On the other hand, the generally-positive reputations of others are also fairly well-known (e.g. I've rarely had negative experiences with schemers of various stripes, and it's hard to dispute how fabulous the Clojure community is [to wit: http://wp.me/p10OJi-6a http://wp.me/p10OJi-6a ]).

brlewis 16y ago

Comment by the author of the article: @fogus: Hm, lucky you, I've never met a Lisp I did like ;) Don't measure a community by its detractors. Further, people don't wonder why PHP is popular. Its popularity originated in ISP-friendliness, and has grown since then through network effects. EDIT: People are still voting up the parent comment, so I probably wasn't clear enough: the parent comment is totally wrong, starting with the words "It's this". The attitude of someone who does not like Lisp is not even a single datapoint, much less evidence, as to how the Lisp community treats newbies.

Semiapies 16y ago
He may be a detractor, but the attitude is similar.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
"Totally wrong"? I apologize for opening with some black humor that has obviously touched a nerve, but once you delete my hyperbolic opening sentence I'll defend the rest of the sentences. I guess I didn't realize that I needed to explictly call out the existence of friendly, helpful, newb-friendly Lisp teachers on Paul Graham's Hacker News as implemented in Arc -- it is easy to forget that not everybody is steeped in the local culture -- but let me now be more explicit: There are plenty of people who are happy to help teach newbs all about higher-order programming by helping them implement their very own toy version of Lisp, and by taking joy in the results. Thank god for those people.
- brlewis 16y ago
  I actually agree with your 2nd and 4th paragraphs, but yes, 1 and 3 touched a nerve. The newbie-unfriendly reputation of the Lisp community has never been entirely deserved. It pains me to see it repeated.
davidmathers 16y ago
No, you misunderstood the comment. http://axisofeval.blogspot.com/2010/08/three-principles-of-lisp.html http://axisofeval.blogspot.com/2010/08/three-principles-of-l... One of the author's projects is writing a lisp. edit- actually it's right there at the top of the page on the right. Motivation: Lisp.
- brlewis 16y ago
  That's not "Motivation: Lisp". Read the fine print: "by the people who didn't bring you A.I." Yes, he has a project to build his own Lisp, because he doesn't like existing ones. That's a detractor.
  - davidmathers 16y ago
    Touche. On the other hand he calls Common Lisp one of "the few acceptable dynamic languages." http://axisofeval.blogspot.com/2010/07/c-40-industrial-response-to-lisp.html http://axisofeval.blogspot.com/2010/07/c-40-industrial-respo... In other words: CL sucks but all the other dynamic languages suck more. My semantics don't label that as "detraction" but yours may differ.
    - brlewis 16y ago
      Given the full quote I still call it detraction: "What's more worrying is that all dynlangs, including the few acceptable ones, like Common Lisp and Factor, are starting to look horribly dated against C#. Seriously."

omouse 16y ago

You're assuming that popularity is a good thing.

swannodette 16y ago

Every community needs people that are congratulatory as well as those that are critical. Lispers love their language. But they are also self-critical and open-minded. They tend to work hard to see how ideas in other programming languages can be properly integrated into their own. Other programming languages and communities could benefit from such self-criticism.

cemerick 16y ago

The character of Lisp communities is all over the map, since each particular implementation has its own. It's not as if someone that picks up Racket is going to waltz into #clojure looking for help, advice, or reinforcement. So, of course there are some Lisp communities that regularly have a quorum of asshats, and we all know which ones those are (in general terms, perhaps). On the other hand, the generally-positive reputations of others are also fairly well-known (e.g. I've rarely had negative experiences with schemers of various stripes, and it's hard to dispute how fabulous the Clojure community is [to wit: http://wp.me/p10OJi-6a http://wp.me/p10OJi-6a ]).