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When you saw others not using Lisp and matching your productivity, you concluded that Lisp wasn't giving you as much leverage as you thought. The egotistical pa
by brlewis 16y ago
When you saw others not using Lisp and matching your productivity, you concluded that Lisp wasn't giving you as much leverage as you thought. The egotistical part is ignoring other possible explanations. Maybe those people are just really smart, and don't need all those nice Lisp features to help them think. (I personally benefit a lot from macros helping me think.)
- lisper 16y ago> you concluded that Lisp wasn't giving you as much leverage as you thought No, What I concluded was that Lisp might not give other people as much leverage as I thought it would. > Maybe those people are just really smart You can't have it both ways. If they're really smart but nonetheless choosing not to use Lisp then there's probably a good reason.
- Xurinos 16y agoUnfamiliarity? Discomfort? The choice could be emotional as opposed to intellectual. Smart people can spend a lot of time and effort defending the status quo.
- brlewis 16y agoThis deserves more discussion. I won't be able to do it justice today, but hope to restart the discussion later, maybe with a comment on your blog.
- lisper 16y agoYou might want to read this: http://rondam.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-are-programming-languages-for.html http://rondam.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-are-programming-lang... (Submitted to HN -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2314572 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2314572 -- but it died with a whimper.)
- brlewis 16y agoYes, that's where I would reply. Unfortunately I'm not surprised it died. It's better thought out than the original Usenet posting, but less controversial.