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You completely read that into the post. At no point did the author include themselves in the one percent. They were commenting on that there are many programm

You completely read that into the post. At no point did the author include themselves in the one percent. They were commenting on that there are many programmers their that they consider one percenters in the clojure community. I think it says much more about you that you read that into the post, than it says about the lisp community. fwiw I only program as a hobby and while I think clojure is great to write in, it's a severe pain in the ass to figure out what the hell someone else was thinking when they wrote their code. The problem with clojure and all lisps, as I see it, is that they make it easy on the author, hard on the reader. It's so simple to create your own special DSL that everyone does it. Now i have to learn a thousand languages.

elohesra 13y ago
> The problem with clojure and all lisps, as I see it, is that they make it easy on the author, hard on the reader. It's so simple to create your own special DSL that everyone does it. Now i have to learn a thousand languages. This is a bit of a problem in Clojure because Lisp gives everyone the ability to play at being a language designer, but there's a reason that most language designers are extraordinarily experienced computer scientists: designing easily readable languages is hard. Where, in my opinion, Lisp's DSL abilities shine especially well is when the Lisper is just taking a well understood domain with well understood terms and translating those terms into Lisp. Where Lisp's DSL abilities can shoot the Lisper in the foot is when the Lisper creates a DSL for a problem domain that's less understood, and where the terms used in the DSL will be less immediately obvious. A good example of Lisp's DSL abilities really shining through is Hiccup, the HTML compiler. For instance: (hiccup.core/html [:body [:div { :id "divTop" :class "headingcontainer" } [:h1 { :class "superheading" } "Welcome!" ]]]) is understandable because we understand the concepts of 'htmlness' 'bodyness' 'divness' 'h1ness'. We understand what it means for something to be a 'body' in the terms of HTML. However, when the domain the DSL is modelling isn't well known to the reader, then the DSL becomes significantly harder to understand than normal procedural code. So yeah, Lisp can be a bit of a double-edged sword, but it's also possible to see how it acts as a gigantic force multiplier for small teams who understand their problem domain really, really well. This is why I believe it makes such a fantastic startup language: to write really good Lisp, you have to understand the problem you're trying to solve really freaking well, and that's a big part of running a successful startup.
deleted 13y ago
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wtetzner 13y ago
> It's so simple to create your own special DSL that everyone does it. Now i have to learn a thousand languages. Every library you use in any language is a DSL that you have to learn. Lisps give you more power when defining a DSL, which means people can make them harder to use and understand, but it also means they have the power to make it easier to use and understand.
- edwinnathaniel 13y ago
  Library < DSL. Library still have to follow the semantics and syntax of its language host. DSL does not.

elohesra 13y ago

> The problem with clojure and all lisps, as I see it, is that they make it easy on the author, hard on the reader. It's so simple to create your own special DSL that everyone does it. Now i have to learn a thousand languages. This is a bit of a problem in Clojure because Lisp gives everyone the ability to play at being a language designer, but there's a reason that most language designers are extraordinarily experienced computer scientists: designing easily readable languages is hard. Where, in my opinion, Lisp's DSL abilities shine especially well is when the Lisper is just taking a well understood domain with well understood terms and translating those terms into Lisp. Where Lisp's DSL abilities can shoot the Lisper in the foot is when the Lisper creates a DSL for a problem domain that's less understood, and where the terms used in the DSL will be less immediately obvious. A good example of Lisp's DSL abilities really shining through is Hiccup, the HTML compiler. For instance: (hiccup.core/html [:body [:div { :id "divTop" :class "headingcontainer" } [:h1 { :class "superheading" } "Welcome!" ]]]) is understandable because we understand the concepts of 'htmlness' 'bodyness' 'divness' 'h1ness'. We understand what it means for something to be a 'body' in the terms of HTML. However, when the domain the DSL is modelling isn't well known to the reader, then the DSL becomes significantly harder to understand than normal procedural code. So yeah, Lisp can be a bit of a double-edged sword, but it's also possible to see how it acts as a gigantic force multiplier for small teams who understand their problem domain really, really well. This is why I believe it makes such a fantastic startup language: to write really good Lisp, you have to understand the problem you're trying to solve really freaking well, and that's a big part of running a successful startup.

deleted 13y ago

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wtetzner 13y ago

> It's so simple to create your own special DSL that everyone does it. Now i have to learn a thousand languages. Every library you use in any language is a DSL that you have to learn. Lisps give you more power when defining a DSL, which means people can make them harder to use and understand, but it also means they have the power to make it easier to use and understand.

edwinnathaniel 13y ago
Library < DSL. Library still have to follow the semantics and syntax of its language host. DSL does not.