4 ms·

>There are a lot of ways to read the situation, but my favorite is that Light Table makes sense purely as a strategic acquisition for YC; there are enough YC co

by batista 14y ago

>There are a lot of ways to read the situation, but my favorite is that Light Table makes sense purely as a strategic acquisition for YC; there are enough YC companies using the languages Light Table targets that, should it yield magical productivity gains, the knock-on effects from being able to get their developers early access and input would be enormous. If they wind up changing the future of software development, all the better.* This sounds like a really lame conspiracy theory. YC got LT to "yield magical productivity gains" to it's companies? Please. Even if the programmers dropped their editors (Emacs, etc) to adopt LT, the productivity gains would be marginal. And code productivity at that level is not the bottleneck for a startup success either. A decent product people want to use, connections, and chance are far more important. For all the "we used Lisp so we did it faster/better" bragging, Yahoo could almost just as easily buy any other ViaWeb competitor for example, even one using the lamest of methodologies. Downvotes? People believe that using a better editor/IDE will yield "magical productivity gains" for a company? Or that ViaWeb succeeded because it was in Lisp? Well, how about the other 99% of companies, that succeeded based on lame technologies, from Facebook's PHP, to whatever. One company doing something successfully among thousands is as far from a proof as you can get. Post-fact rationalization sounds more like it ("Oh, we got bought. It was because we were ultra-productive programmers yielding Lisp").

ShardPhoenix 14y ago
While I sort-of agree with your point, I think you're being unnecessarily hostile here.
- batista 14y ago
  I might come of a little hostile yes. I dislike the cult aspect of the whole story, that is. And I think the "ViaWeb/Lisp -> super programming capabilities over mere mortals -> Yahoo millions" thing that started the whole cult worship is both wrong and flawed (e.g statistically insignificant to prove anything).
  - Cushman 14y ago
    I will agree with that the idea that the cult of Lisp started because Viaweb proved that super programming capabilities are better than mere mortals is both wrong and flawed.
  - BrandonM 14y ago
    But why does it anger you so much? Besides, you seem to be ignoring that ViaWeb was built before there were ubiquitous open source libraries for practically everything. My guess is that they basically had to write the whole server/application/persistence/security/payment stack themselves from scratch. Considering that they were able to build it all with a handful (2-4?) of programmers and to beat out competition that had a head start and a much higher head count, I would wager that Lisp had at least a little something to do with it.
    - batista 14y ago
      >But why does it anger you so much? So much? I just made a comment, it's not like I'm running around foaming at the mouth, is it? >Besides, you seem to be ignoring that ViaWeb was built before there were ubiquitous open source libraries for practically everything. My guess is that they basically had to write the whole server/application/persistence/security/payment stack themselves from scratch. Considering that they were able to build it all with a handful (2-4?) of programmers and to beat out competition that had a head start and a much higher head count, I would wager that Lisp had at least a little something to do with it. I agree. But wouldn't something like Smalltalk be equally good for the same purpose? Or Perl?
Cushman 14y ago
Wow, man. Did a Lisp eat your cat or something? Maybe you didn't, but a lot of people saw the Light Table demo and thought, "If that thing works right it looks like it might cut my workload in half." This would be the reason (you may have heard) they've raised a few hundred thousand in pre-orders in addition to funding from the most prominent startup accelerator in tech. Okay, so you don't buy the hype. Bully for you. But "a really lame conspiracy theory"? Presumably, not only would Viaweb have been as dominant were it written in C, but 37signals would have been more successful sticking with PHP instead of wasting time writing Rails, and if all your Emacs users switched to using Notepad, it wouldn't cost the company any money. That sounds pretty realistic.
- batista 14y ago
  >Wow, man. Did a Lisp eat your cat or something? No, I even like it. It just didn't make my cat 2x more productive as a programmer, which is what I find a BS statement coming from many Lisp proponents... >Maybe you didn't, but a lot of people saw the Light Table demo and thought, "If that thing works right it looks like it might cut my workload in half." This would be the reason (you may have heard) they've raised a few hundred thousand in pre-orders in addition to funding from the most prominent startup accelerator in tech. I like the LT demo. I don't think in the least it will cut my workload in half --those that think so are IMNSHO delluded. At best it will make certain operations easier to carry out, but most of them will be marginal to my efficiency. Editing environment is not the bottleneck to my coding, thinking is. That's why thousands of programmers work just fine with crude old Vim and not something like a Smalltalk editor or a Lisp Machine (or even Emacs or VS or Eclipse). A competent programmer can get by even with vi or Notepad++, with only small loss of productivity. >Okay, so you don't buy the hype. Bully for you. But "a really lame conspiracy theory"? Presumably, not only would Viaweb have been as dominant were it written in C, but 37signals would have been more successful sticking with PHP instead of wasting time writing Rails, and if all your Emacs users switched to using Notepad, it wouldn't cost the company any money. That sounds pretty realistic. Actually there were programmers AS succesful at the time as ViaWeb that were INDEED writing in C. Case in point, Yahoo, the company that bought ViaWeb in the first place, used C. Later switched to PHP IIRC. But, crucial to my actual point was the use of the world "marginal". C to Ruby might make a difference. Ruby to Lisp not so much (it could even be adverse, because of the lack of mature web frameworks and libs that Ruby has plently). And certainly Emacs to LT, even less so.

by batista 14y ago

ShardPhoenix 14y ago

While I sort-of agree with your point, I think you're being unnecessarily hostile here.

batista 14y ago
I might come of a little hostile yes. I dislike the cult aspect of the whole story, that is. And I think the "ViaWeb/Lisp -> super programming capabilities over mere mortals -> Yahoo millions" thing that started the whole cult worship is both wrong and flawed (e.g statistically insignificant to prove anything).
- Cushman 14y ago
  I will agree with that the idea that the cult of Lisp started because Viaweb proved that super programming capabilities are better than mere mortals is both wrong and flawed.
- BrandonM 14y ago
  But why does it anger you so much? Besides, you seem to be ignoring that ViaWeb was built before there were ubiquitous open source libraries for practically everything. My guess is that they basically had to write the whole server/application/persistence/security/payment stack themselves from scratch. Considering that they were able to build it all with a handful (2-4?) of programmers and to beat out competition that had a head start and a much higher head count, I would wager that Lisp had at least a little something to do with it.
  - batista 14y ago
    >But why does it anger you so much? So much? I just made a comment, it's not like I'm running around foaming at the mouth, is it? >Besides, you seem to be ignoring that ViaWeb was built before there were ubiquitous open source libraries for practically everything. My guess is that they basically had to write the whole server/application/persistence/security/payment stack themselves from scratch. Considering that they were able to build it all with a handful (2-4?) of programmers and to beat out competition that had a head start and a much higher head count, I would wager that Lisp had at least a little something to do with it. I agree. But wouldn't something like Smalltalk be equally good for the same purpose? Or Perl?

Cushman 14y ago

Wow, man. Did a Lisp eat your cat or something? Maybe you didn't, but a lot of people saw the Light Table demo and thought, "If that thing works right it looks like it might cut my workload in half." This would be the reason (you may have heard) they've raised a few hundred thousand in pre-orders in addition to funding from the most prominent startup accelerator in tech. Okay, so you don't buy the hype. Bully for you. But "a really lame conspiracy theory"? Presumably, not only would Viaweb have been as dominant were it written in C, but 37signals would have been more successful sticking with PHP instead of wasting time writing Rails, and if all your Emacs users switched to using Notepad, it wouldn't cost the company any money. That sounds pretty realistic.

batista 14y ago
>Wow, man. Did a Lisp eat your cat or something? No, I even like it. It just didn't make my cat 2x more productive as a programmer, which is what I find a BS statement coming from many Lisp proponents... >Maybe you didn't, but a lot of people saw the Light Table demo and thought, "If that thing works right it looks like it might cut my workload in half." This would be the reason (you may have heard) they've raised a few hundred thousand in pre-orders in addition to funding from the most prominent startup accelerator in tech. I like the LT demo. I don't think in the least it will cut my workload in half --those that think so are IMNSHO delluded. At best it will make certain operations easier to carry out, but most of them will be marginal to my efficiency. Editing environment is not the bottleneck to my coding, thinking is. That's why thousands of programmers work just fine with crude old Vim and not something like a Smalltalk editor or a Lisp Machine (or even Emacs or VS or Eclipse). A competent programmer can get by even with vi or Notepad++, with only small loss of productivity. >Okay, so you don't buy the hype. Bully for you. But "a really lame conspiracy theory"? Presumably, not only would Viaweb have been as dominant were it written in C, but 37signals would have been more successful sticking with PHP instead of wasting time writing Rails, and if all your Emacs users switched to using Notepad, it wouldn't cost the company any money. That sounds pretty realistic. Actually there were programmers AS succesful at the time as ViaWeb that were INDEED writing in C. Case in point, Yahoo, the company that bought ViaWeb in the first place, used C. Later switched to PHP IIRC. But, crucial to my actual point was the use of the world "marginal". C to Ruby might make a difference. Ruby to Lisp not so much (it could even be adverse, because of the lack of mature web frameworks and libs that Ruby has plently). And certainly Emacs to LT, even less so.