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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

by 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."

by brlewis 16y ago

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."