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I think that Beating the Averages demonstrated that Lisp was PG's Blub, and maybe he wasn't using a language with strong static typing or logic programming or s

by snazz 6y ago

I think that Beating the Averages demonstrated that Lisp was PG's Blub, and maybe he wasn't using a language with strong static typing or logic programming or something like that for the same reasons that Java programmers wouldn't choose Lisp. I don't think that the fundamental flaw with that essay is the arrogance so much as the assumption that "language power" lies on a continuum in the first place.

nojito 6y ago
There was nothing special about the language chosen for viaweb. It was more the ability to understand what their endusers wanted better than their competitors.
- snazz 6y ago
  If their competitors were writing their applications in C++ or Perl, it probably would have made a noticeable difference to their iteration speed. Writing a web application in C++ (especially in 1995) would not have been too efficient. I'm sure that they had a good understanding of their customers, but the language had to have made a difference as well. These days, we're writing web apps in languages like JavaScript and Ruby, not C++, so the difference would be a lot less significant.
  - nojito 6y ago
    Knowledge of the customer and programming ability is the most important driver of success. The idea that LISP was a secret sauce for viaweb does not hold up under scrutiny. If you have access to lexisnexis to lookup news articles from the era, it’s easy to see that.
  - oalae5niMiel7qu 6y ago
    Google is known to write a lot of their web apps in Java, which is very similar to C++.
bluefox 6y ago
Please reconsider your assumptions. PG has written two Lisp books in the nineties, one of them containing a Prolog interpreter. In fact, many Lisp programs utilize some form of logic programming. With regards to "strong static typing", types are but one way to think about things. Since Lisp affords powerful ways to shape the language, there is a culture of implementing and thinking about various paradigms, typing included. For example, the first Haskell implementation was written in Lisp, and there are other explorations of that particular paradigm. All programmers are blub programmers to some extent, but Lisp has the tools and the culture to fight it.
- snazz 6y ago
  I apologize that my tone came across as dismissive. Chapter 24 of my paper copy of On Lisp does contain a "sketch of [Prolog's] implementation". I can certainly see the value in Lisp and the culture of bottom-up programming (there's a reason I own a physical copy of the book). I shouldn't have brought up logic and statically-typed programming as specific examples; my point was more that it's misguided to consider the "power continuum" as one-dimensional, where languages lower on the continuum are "dumb" and languages higher on the continuum are "weird". As you said, a language with good types is not necessarily more or less powerful than a highly dynamic language.

by snazz 6y ago

nojito 6y ago

There was nothing special about the language chosen for viaweb. It was more the ability to understand what their endusers wanted better than their competitors.

snazz 6y ago
If their competitors were writing their applications in C++ or Perl, it probably would have made a noticeable difference to their iteration speed. Writing a web application in C++ (especially in 1995) would not have been too efficient. I'm sure that they had a good understanding of their customers, but the language had to have made a difference as well. These days, we're writing web apps in languages like JavaScript and Ruby, not C++, so the difference would be a lot less significant.
- nojito 6y ago
  Knowledge of the customer and programming ability is the most important driver of success. The idea that LISP was a secret sauce for viaweb does not hold up under scrutiny. If you have access to lexisnexis to lookup news articles from the era, it’s easy to see that.
- oalae5niMiel7qu 6y ago
  Google is known to write a lot of their web apps in Java, which is very similar to C++.

bluefox 6y ago

Please reconsider your assumptions. PG has written two Lisp books in the nineties, one of them containing a Prolog interpreter. In fact, many Lisp programs utilize some form of logic programming. With regards to "strong static typing", types are but one way to think about things. Since Lisp affords powerful ways to shape the language, there is a culture of implementing and thinking about various paradigms, typing included. For example, the first Haskell implementation was written in Lisp, and there are other explorations of that particular paradigm. All programmers are blub programmers to some extent, but Lisp has the tools and the culture to fight it.

snazz 6y ago
I apologize that my tone came across as dismissive. Chapter 24 of my paper copy of On Lisp does contain a "sketch of [Prolog's] implementation". I can certainly see the value in Lisp and the culture of bottom-up programming (there's a reason I own a physical copy of the book). I shouldn't have brought up logic and statically-typed programming as specific examples; my point was more that it's misguided to consider the "power continuum" as one-dimensional, where languages lower on the continuum are "dumb" and languages higher on the continuum are "weird". As you said, a language with good types is not necessarily more or less powerful than a highly dynamic language.