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> What's in it for me? Expressiveness. I appreciate the author's wanting a more explicit and practical answer to this question, but I don't think his answer he

> What's in it for me? Expressiveness. I appreciate the author's wanting a more explicit and practical answer to this question, but I don't think his answer here ("expressiveness") does any better job than the other explanations he criticizes. > But [learning Lisp] also requires an investment of about 100–200 hours. That's asking too much. No, it's not. That's how long it takes sometimes, or longer. Why do we all expect answers and understanding to come so quickly and easily? It'd be a nice world otherwise, but almost always enlightenment comes at a cost: patient focus and study.

AnimalMuppet 12y ago
Sure, that's true. But the problem is, there are dozens of things telling me that, if I invest that kind of time in them, they'll pay me back. Which one(s) should I pursue? In order to decide, I have to have some explanation of the benefits that I can grasp (at least in the abstract) before investing 100 hours. "Invest 100 hours and then you'll see why you should have done so" is not a sales pitch that will win with very many people.
- marcosdumay 12y ago
  Why do you expect things that really improve your life to come with sales pitches?
  - AnimalMuppet 12y ago
    People are usually eager to recommend things that they feel really improved their life. If you, for example, read HN, you see "sales pitches" (in the broad sense) all the time.
    - marcosdumay 12y ago
      Yes, that's true. But it's both naive, arrogant, and rude to require those "sales pitches" to be good. At the end of the day, it's up to you to decide what's better for you. If you try to outsource it, you'll discover that the best sales pitches around are for dead-end technologies. At the other side of it, people giving you those recommendations really have no better way to explain it. PG has an well known essay about language power, but even that isn't very precise. Some kinds of knowledge you really have to know before you understand what they are good for.

AnimalMuppet 12y ago

Sure, that's true. But the problem is, there are dozens of things telling me that, if I invest that kind of time in them, they'll pay me back. Which one(s) should I pursue? In order to decide, I have to have some explanation of the benefits that I can grasp (at least in the abstract) before investing 100 hours. "Invest 100 hours and then you'll see why you should have done so" is not a sales pitch that will win with very many people.

marcosdumay 12y ago
Why do you expect things that really improve your life to come with sales pitches?
- AnimalMuppet 12y ago
  People are usually eager to recommend things that they feel really improved their life. If you, for example, read HN, you see "sales pitches" (in the broad sense) all the time.
  - marcosdumay 12y ago
    Yes, that's true. But it's both naive, arrogant, and rude to require those "sales pitches" to be good. At the end of the day, it's up to you to decide what's better for you. If you try to outsource it, you'll discover that the best sales pitches around are for dead-end technologies. At the other side of it, people giving you those recommendations really have no better way to explain it. PG has an well known essay about language power, but even that isn't very precise. Some kinds of knowledge you really have to know before you understand what they are good for.