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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.
by 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 agoIf 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 agoKnowledge 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 agoGoogle is known to write a lot of their web apps in Java, which is very similar to C++.