4 ms·

I tried to get into SBCL a few months ago and I found all of the documentation I encountered to be really good (really good) but there was just too much to lear

I tried to get into SBCL a few months ago and I found all of the documentation I encountered to be really good (really good) but there was just too much to learn. I'm not complaining, I just didn't have the time personally to climb the learning curve (despite all the available lore from previous climbers.) When you start with a small system and reinvent things, you know them from the inside out. Often that's easier and more fun than reading up on an existing large system. The downside, of course, is that we wind up with incompatibilities and myriad idiosyncratic ways of doing things.

abrax3141 4y ago
This is called “The Paradox of the Active User” and it underlies an enormous amount of why our world sucks (not that it all sucks, but this underlies much of where it does). In short: I’m too busy to learn something that will make me so much happier and more productive forever. (Aka. “I’ll just sit in the dark.” :-)
- carapace 4y ago
  Perhaps perversely, your comment is almost, but not quite, enough to push me to make a second run at it. I mean, I goddamned know CL is better. :) Cheers! I've pondered what strange reasons might lurk in the depths of me psyche that could be inhibiting from using Lisp.
  - abrax3141 4y ago
    Hint: Don't let the parens turn you off. I promise that once you get over the hump, you will learn to love them, and won't ever want to use a language that doesn't have them!
    - johnbendi 4y ago
      I don't think that's the right mindset to have. One should just learn to appreciate diversity. One shouldn't approach any language with the view that one is about to discover a language that rules them all. Just learn with a view to discover the strengths and weaknesses of whatever language you are dealing with at that moment, as every language must have those.

4 ms·

I tried to get into SBCL a few months ago and I found all of the documentation I encountered to be really good (really good) but there was just too much to lear

by carapace 4y ago

abrax3141 4y ago
This is called “The Paradox of the Active User” and it underlies an enormous amount of why our world sucks (not that it all sucks, but this underlies much of where it does). In short: I’m too busy to learn something that will make me so much happier and more productive forever. (Aka. “I’ll just sit in the dark.” :-)
- carapace 4y ago
  Perhaps perversely, your comment is almost, but not quite, enough to push me to make a second run at it. I mean, I goddamned know CL is better. :) Cheers! I've pondered what strange reasons might lurk in the depths of me psyche that could be inhibiting from using Lisp.
  - abrax3141 4y ago
    Hint: Don't let the parens turn you off. I promise that once you get over the hump, you will learn to love them, and won't ever want to use a language that doesn't have them!
    - johnbendi 4y ago
      I don't think that's the right mindset to have. One should just learn to appreciate diversity. One shouldn't approach any language with the view that one is about to discover a language that rules them all. Just learn with a view to discover the strengths and weaknesses of whatever language you are dealing with at that moment, as every language must have those.