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Honestly, this is probably a big part of the reason I've really come to dislike things like Scrum and what Agile looks like now. My experience has been that the

Honestly, this is probably a big part of the reason I've really come to dislike things like Scrum and what Agile looks like now. My experience has been that these methodologies tend to treat devs as fungible cogs which fits very much with the idea of engineers/developers as assembly line workers.

lisper 6y ago
Exactly this. Management wants every part of the production process to be easily replaceable, including the people. This is why management loves, e.g., Java. Java gives you a lot of the benefits of Lisp (GC, objects, exceptions) but without any of the features that facilitate writing beautiful elegant code. So Java code is ugly and festooned with boilerplate and using it is an incredibly painful experience (for a Lisp programmer). But if I'm a manager and I have a Java programmer working for me and one day I don't like the cut of his jib, I can fire him and instantly replace him with another Java programmer, because they are a dime a dozen and one is as good as another. As a manager, that one feature dominates all the cruft and the horror, because I don't have to deal with the cruft, I hire you to deal with it for me. And your replacability gives me power over you. So you type boilerplate while I play golf. It would be a pretty good deal if I enjoyed golf as much as I enjoy writing Lisp code.
- stevenwliao 6y ago
  How's the state of Lisp in production these days?
  - lisper 6y ago
    My one-man company uses a bespoke e-commerce system written in Lisp. It uses Stripe and Easypost on the back end and gives me a completely seamless fulfillment process that lets me ship anywhere in the world with essentially zero effort. I also consult for a major chip developer to help them maintain an internal design tool written in Common Lisp which they consider to be a major source of their competitive advantage. So it's not widely used, but where it is used it's a big win.
    - klipt 6y ago
      Sounds like lisp is good for a team of size 1, but are there any larger teams using lisp successfully? I've heard theories that lisp teams don't scale well because the language is so customisable that team members have trouble reading each other's code.
      - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        Hell I have trouble reading my own code. Dense, arcane, not descriptive of what's going on. FWIW
        kazinator 6y ago
        I love my code. Whether it's 6 months old or 20 years, I can readily understand it, and prefer it other people's code by a wide margin.
        JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        Must not be learning? My code changes because I learn and change.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        kazinator 6y ago
        Erratum: It's too late to edit the comment, but what I was trying to say is that my code doesn't change because I don't learn. Alas, my wording somehow doesn't convey that at all. Credits to the clairvoyance of JoeAltmeier for the kind correction!
        JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        Sorry didn't mean to be catty. Just that, our 20-year old code for most people seems naïve and clumsy.
- lliamander 6y ago
  I'd always had the impression that this was the case, but when I started to program in Erlang after several years of Java it became clear to me how true this is. Java has been adding features that improve expressiveness, and from the perspective of a strictly Java programmer they are great. From the outside though, it feels like these new features still take way more work than should be necessary. I appreciate what Java was meant to be (a way to drag C/C++ programmers closer to Lisp) and I would say that's a goal that has been achieved. I just wish it were easier to go the rest of the way.
- pacala 6y ago
  Indeed, a power struggle. Management's natural responsibility is relationships to other humans, which makes them much harder to replace compared to a cog that performs a technical task, no matter how much skill that task requires.
lliamander 6y ago
I think the problem lies with who owns the process. If engineers own the process, then things can work. If non-engineers own the process, then you get the assembly-line mentality. Whether one calls it "Agile" is really irrelevant.
creed98 6y ago
Emeraldledger.com
seedless-sensat 6y ago
A lot of application software is fungible, boring, and just needs to get done. Agile helps with that. No one is suggesting planning poker for qubit wiring.

lisper 6y ago

Exactly this. Management wants every part of the production process to be easily replaceable, including the people. This is why management loves, e.g., Java. Java gives you a lot of the benefits of Lisp (GC, objects, exceptions) but without any of the features that facilitate writing beautiful elegant code. So Java code is ugly and festooned with boilerplate and using it is an incredibly painful experience (for a Lisp programmer). But if I'm a manager and I have a Java programmer working for me and one day I don't like the cut of his jib, I can fire him and instantly replace him with another Java programmer, because they are a dime a dozen and one is as good as another. As a manager, that one feature dominates all the cruft and the horror, because I don't have to deal with the cruft, I hire you to deal with it for me. And your replacability gives me power over you. So you type boilerplate while I play golf. It would be a pretty good deal if I enjoyed golf as much as I enjoy writing Lisp code.

stevenwliao 6y ago
How's the state of Lisp in production these days?
- lisper 6y ago
  My one-man company uses a bespoke e-commerce system written in Lisp. It uses Stripe and Easypost on the back end and gives me a completely seamless fulfillment process that lets me ship anywhere in the world with essentially zero effort. I also consult for a major chip developer to help them maintain an internal design tool written in Common Lisp which they consider to be a major source of their competitive advantage. So it's not widely used, but where it is used it's a big win.
  - klipt 6y ago
    Sounds like lisp is good for a team of size 1, but are there any larger teams using lisp successfully? I've heard theories that lisp teams don't scale well because the language is so customisable that team members have trouble reading each other's code.
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      Hell I have trouble reading my own code. Dense, arcane, not descriptive of what's going on. FWIW
      - kazinator 6y ago
        I love my code. Whether it's 6 months old or 20 years, I can readily understand it, and prefer it other people's code by a wide margin.
        JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        Must not be learning? My code changes because I learn and change.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        kazinator 6y ago
        Erratum: It's too late to edit the comment, but what I was trying to say is that my code doesn't change because I don't learn. Alas, my wording somehow doesn't convey that at all. Credits to the clairvoyance of JoeAltmeier for the kind correction!
        JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        Sorry didn't mean to be catty. Just that, our 20-year old code for most people seems naïve and clumsy.
lliamander 6y ago
I'd always had the impression that this was the case, but when I started to program in Erlang after several years of Java it became clear to me how true this is. Java has been adding features that improve expressiveness, and from the perspective of a strictly Java programmer they are great. From the outside though, it feels like these new features still take way more work than should be necessary. I appreciate what Java was meant to be (a way to drag C/C++ programmers closer to Lisp) and I would say that's a goal that has been achieved. I just wish it were easier to go the rest of the way.
pacala 6y ago
Indeed, a power struggle. Management's natural responsibility is relationships to other humans, which makes them much harder to replace compared to a cog that performs a technical task, no matter how much skill that task requires.

lliamander 6y ago

I think the problem lies with who owns the process. If engineers own the process, then things can work. If non-engineers own the process, then you get the assembly-line mentality. Whether one calls it "Agile" is really irrelevant.

creed98 6y ago

Emeraldledger.com

seedless-sensat 6y ago

A lot of application software is fungible, boring, and just needs to get done. Agile helps with that. No one is suggesting planning poker for qubit wiring.