3 ms·

I've known a great many programmers over many years and I've observed some patterns I'll note below. I'm not hypothesizing on why any of this is and it could be

by User23 5y ago

I've known a great many programmers over many years and I've observed some patterns I'll note below. I'm not hypothesizing on why any of this is and it could be for any number of reasons. However, neither arrogance nor a desire to maximize pretentiousness has struck me as one of them, except for a handful of the most immature persons who quickly grew out of it. Every single programmer interested in any language in the ML family or Haskell has considerably above average[1] intellectual horsepower. The syntax and type system can both fairly be called "weird." The Lisp programmers I've encountered are along a wider range. They've ranged from average to ML tier, the latter being the ones that, as PG observes, are more interested in "weird" features like macros, call/cc, and so on. And then you have extremely popular languages like C, C++, Java, JavaScript, Python, and so on. Virtually every programmer has used one or more of them to a significant degree, so the mean programmer using one of those languages is virtually the same as the mean programmer in the general population. This is expected since in cases like this the mean of a subset approaches the mean of its superset as the size of the latter approaches that of the former. Programmers who master C++'s template system are an exception to the above. They're also well above average. [1] In this comment everywhere I say average or mean I'm referring to programmers and not the general population. Average isn't bad, the average person here is quite bright for example.

marcosdumay 5y ago
> Every single programmer interested in any language in the ML family or Haskell has considerably above average[1] intellectual horsepower. Just to point that there's nothing strange or unexpected about this. You will get people that are more intellectual than average it you filter by any niche intellectual activity with no immediate non-intellectual reward. I mean, if you search for programmers that understand plant physiology, you will get the same effect. It basically means that smart people tend to be curious.
tester756 5y ago
>The Lisp programmers I've encountered are along a wider range. They've ranged from average to ML tier, the latter being the ones that, as PG observes, are more interested in "weird" features like macros, call/cc, and so on. I'd say that since there's lack of Haskell jobs, then non passionate people do not touch it since it's useless to them Passionate people check it out cuz other passionate people recommended it And circle repeats.

by User23 5y ago

marcosdumay 5y ago

> Every single programmer interested in any language in the ML family or Haskell has considerably above average[1] intellectual horsepower. Just to point that there's nothing strange or unexpected about this. You will get people that are more intellectual than average it you filter by any niche intellectual activity with no immediate non-intellectual reward. I mean, if you search for programmers that understand plant physiology, you will get the same effect. It basically means that smart people tend to be curious.

tester756 5y ago

>The Lisp programmers I've encountered are along a wider range. They've ranged from average to ML tier, the latter being the ones that, as PG observes, are more interested in "weird" features like macros, call/cc, and so on. I'd say that since there's lack of Haskell jobs, then non passionate people do not touch it since it's useless to them Passionate people check it out cuz other passionate people recommended it And circle repeats.