4 ms·

This effect is real for some people, despite a lot of people don't like it. It's like some post-war syndromes where people feel the hollowness and pointlessnes

This effect is real for some people, despite a lot of people don't like it. It's like some post-war syndromes where people feel the hollowness and pointlessness when seeing other people living a normal, meaningful life, or have to go back to the village from large cities. It's like a red pill, it always bugs me like "I wish I have macros here", or "type classes here", "Erlang process here", "Hindley-Millner or structural typing here"... Actually those languages are not that outstanding, however, it defeats the motivations to make small in-box-improvements like "I'm going to use some OO pattern to make this more SOLID". You can also try hard to slowly push the industry forward but it's still tens of years to be "professional" based on the history you have read, which sound very defeating for mortals, too. Imagine yourself has been throwback to an early 90s project where the mantra is still "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and everyone endlessly patches everything while rejects new technologies because no one else is using them.

krapp 7y ago
Some people have a psychological or emotional reaction to code, similar to the way others do to poetry or prose, and sometimes the shape and structure of code gives people a sense of order and centeredness, in a similar way to OCD. The relative simplicity of Lisp compared to other languages probably makes these effects more acute. I don't know if that's necessarily a trait of the paradigm or of some of its adherents. I've felt that same calming effect but with other languages - and honestly I've found lisp code to be masochistically terse and opaque a lot of the time, although I've only messed with Arc and dabbled with Clojure and Racket. I guess that just means I haven't found enlightenment yet.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  > Some people have a psychological or emotional reaction to code, similar to the way others do to poetry or prose, and sometimes the shape and structure of code gives people a sense of order and centeredness, in a similar way to OCD. The relative simplicity of Lisp compared to other languages probably makes these effects more acute. I would really dislike to work with such people in a professional setting. Can you imagine having PR with someone who thinks code should inspire an emotional response? You know what’s beautiful? Simple and effective things, even if you can’t fall in love with the way they look.
  - krapp 7y ago
    I think it's less about believing code should inspire an emotional response (although what is "elegance" if not an aesthetic judgement) as being uncomfortable around code that doesn't inspire that response in yourself. For instance, Python developers' preference for significant whitespace, or the visceral disgust with which some regard javascript or OOP, go well beyond mere technical considerations.
  - mjburgess 7y ago
    I think it would be hard to master programming without developing such an attachment -- emotion is what motivates people. You've become emotionally attached to the operation of the program, it seems, in being "simple and effective". I suppose then you have mastered, or are mastering, a kind of engineering. It isn't clear to me why working with you would be any more or less pleasant than the other kind of a person. Sometimes a master of one craft is needed to repair/supplement the oversights of another. Arguments you cause about the "efficiency" of some approach are no doubt a problem, and may injure the long-run intelligibility of the project. Those who master programming as such are the frontal lobes of teams who master engineering -- providing a global, planning, synthesizing, rationalizing perspective which keeps the program intelligible.
  - namelosw 7y ago
    I guess you mean "easy" instead of "simple". "Simple" is very subjective and could be hard to achieve (so is "easy" though). In many objective aspects Lisp is much simpler than "professional" languages in terms of spec, model, symbol. Languages like Haskell traditionally considered "hard", but it also has a lot of simple aspects - For example, there's no variable in the first glance, only constant. And then it turns out there's even no constant because constant is zero parameter function. At last, almost everything is just a function including tuples which looks like a compiler primitive. Also, there's no such thing as multi-arity functions because there's currying. It eliminates most unnecessary concepts in order to achieve "simple", but it's infamous because it has a "hard" reputation among "professional" programmers. PS: Surprisingly, Scala's has a much shorter spec than Java, and Scala is one of the most attacked language for being bloated.
dottedmag 7y ago
Exposure to Go and Clojure brings the opposite effect: "I don't really want this glitzy thing. Functions, plain data and a bit of polymorphism is all it takes to solve the problem"
- cultofmetatron 7y ago
  uh... clojure is a lisp and supports full blown macros. Surem 95% of the time, Functions, plain data and a bit of polymorphism is all you need. those higher abstractions are for flattening the curve on making easy to use libraries. They are sharp tools. Go decides to hand you safety scissors, clojure gives you a high end razor sharp knife and expects you to be educated on its proper usage.
  - dottedmag 7y ago
    And that "proper usage" is basically "never". I remember a lot of macros-based libraries early, however it turned out they are not composable, so they grew a plain functions-and-data interface. New libraries don't use macros much. AFAICT the role of macros in modern Clojure is limited to new control constructs.
    - p_l 7y ago
      Early clojure reflected a bit early macro-enabled compiled lisps where macros were heavily used due to (perceived) cost of function call.
    - arunix 7y ago
      But in that case what is the benefit of Clojure being a Lisp?
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  “And solving the problem in the simplest way possible is what I’m paid to do.”
pjmlp 7y ago
So I would be doing Clipper 5.x, Turbo Pascal 7, modular development, AOT compiled to native code in a type safe manner? While reading about Common Lisp and Smalltalk/V releases on Computer Shopper? Sounds an interesting time travel proposal.

krapp 7y ago

Some people have a psychological or emotional reaction to code, similar to the way others do to poetry or prose, and sometimes the shape and structure of code gives people a sense of order and centeredness, in a similar way to OCD. The relative simplicity of Lisp compared to other languages probably makes these effects more acute. I don't know if that's necessarily a trait of the paradigm or of some of its adherents. I've felt that same calming effect but with other languages - and honestly I've found lisp code to be masochistically terse and opaque a lot of the time, although I've only messed with Arc and dabbled with Clojure and Racket. I guess that just means I haven't found enlightenment yet.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
> Some people have a psychological or emotional reaction to code, similar to the way others do to poetry or prose, and sometimes the shape and structure of code gives people a sense of order and centeredness, in a similar way to OCD. The relative simplicity of Lisp compared to other languages probably makes these effects more acute. I would really dislike to work with such people in a professional setting. Can you imagine having PR with someone who thinks code should inspire an emotional response? You know what’s beautiful? Simple and effective things, even if you can’t fall in love with the way they look.
- krapp 7y ago
  I think it's less about believing code should inspire an emotional response (although what is "elegance" if not an aesthetic judgement) as being uncomfortable around code that doesn't inspire that response in yourself. For instance, Python developers' preference for significant whitespace, or the visceral disgust with which some regard javascript or OOP, go well beyond mere technical considerations.
- mjburgess 7y ago
  I think it would be hard to master programming without developing such an attachment -- emotion is what motivates people. You've become emotionally attached to the operation of the program, it seems, in being "simple and effective". I suppose then you have mastered, or are mastering, a kind of engineering. It isn't clear to me why working with you would be any more or less pleasant than the other kind of a person. Sometimes a master of one craft is needed to repair/supplement the oversights of another. Arguments you cause about the "efficiency" of some approach are no doubt a problem, and may injure the long-run intelligibility of the project. Those who master programming as such are the frontal lobes of teams who master engineering -- providing a global, planning, synthesizing, rationalizing perspective which keeps the program intelligible.
- namelosw 7y ago
  I guess you mean "easy" instead of "simple". "Simple" is very subjective and could be hard to achieve (so is "easy" though). In many objective aspects Lisp is much simpler than "professional" languages in terms of spec, model, symbol. Languages like Haskell traditionally considered "hard", but it also has a lot of simple aspects - For example, there's no variable in the first glance, only constant. And then it turns out there's even no constant because constant is zero parameter function. At last, almost everything is just a function including tuples which looks like a compiler primitive. Also, there's no such thing as multi-arity functions because there's currying. It eliminates most unnecessary concepts in order to achieve "simple", but it's infamous because it has a "hard" reputation among "professional" programmers. PS: Surprisingly, Scala's has a much shorter spec than Java, and Scala is one of the most attacked language for being bloated.

dottedmag 7y ago

Exposure to Go and Clojure brings the opposite effect: "I don't really want this glitzy thing. Functions, plain data and a bit of polymorphism is all it takes to solve the problem"

cultofmetatron 7y ago
uh... clojure is a lisp and supports full blown macros. Surem 95% of the time, Functions, plain data and a bit of polymorphism is all you need. those higher abstractions are for flattening the curve on making easy to use libraries. They are sharp tools. Go decides to hand you safety scissors, clojure gives you a high end razor sharp knife and expects you to be educated on its proper usage.
- dottedmag 7y ago
  And that "proper usage" is basically "never". I remember a lot of macros-based libraries early, however it turned out they are not composable, so they grew a plain functions-and-data interface. New libraries don't use macros much. AFAICT the role of macros in modern Clojure is limited to new control constructs.
  - p_l 7y ago
    Early clojure reflected a bit early macro-enabled compiled lisps where macros were heavily used due to (perceived) cost of function call.
  - arunix 7y ago
    But in that case what is the benefit of Clojure being a Lisp?
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
“And solving the problem in the simplest way possible is what I’m paid to do.”

pjmlp 7y ago

So I would be doing Clipper 5.x, Turbo Pascal 7, modular development, AOT compiled to native code in a type safe manner? While reading about Common Lisp and Smalltalk/V releases on Computer Shopper? Sounds an interesting time travel proposal.