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The only part of PG's writings I've taken seriously was On Lisp -- which was excellent, TBF! Everything else I was made aware of later was so seriously skewed b
by Quekid5 6y ago
The only part of PG's writings I've taken seriously was On Lisp -- which was excellent, TBF! Everything else I was made aware of later was so seriously skewed by Survivor Bias[0] that it wasn't even useful for anyone outside the "world" which he inhabits.
I don't place any blame on him personally, it's just that his day-to-day is so removed from anything close to ours that his musings are... irrelevant for the vast majority.
[0] I guess? Is there an Absurdly Lucky DotCom Success Bias?
- Abhinav2000 6y agoI actually read his ANSI Common Lisp book first, and being a newbie at the time, didn’t have any idea of his immense success. Definitely was very cool to find out that the author of book I read was a billionaire! I’ve heard great things about On Lisp, so will read it when I get to a more advanced level. But honestly I feel like I could write a better ANSI Common Lisp book, it has so many convoluted parts. That said, it was written in the mid 90s so it isn’t correct to judge a book after 20+ years.
- Quekid5 6y agoI'm not sure Common Lisp has evolved very far in the last 20 years, honestly -- that seems to be part of the value proposition, though I don't quite understand it. I do recommend On Lisp for people who want to understand and get a feel for lispy ways to solve problems... but, fair warning: I did already have a very solid grasp of programming in general via C, C++, Python, O'Caml, a little bit of Haskell (at the time) when I read it. So... YMMV. If you want a good book on paradigms in general, I'd recommend something else.