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Why Ruby is an acceptable Lisp (2005)

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Re: Why Ruby is an acceptable Lisp (2005)

#11

Post by hibbelig »

sundarurfriend wrote: post #8
behnamoh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a good point. On a sidenote, I get a weird feeling from HN's simple UI/UX. On one hand, it feels like the old CLI machines that put the focus on "content" - kinda like "do one thing and do it right". On the other hand, reading all the comments, getting notified for replies on comments, etc. is really hard. In this day and age, one would wonder if HN really hates JS (well, except for the upvote button)…

Community building and maintanence is a very tough job, and the simplest of things can end up nudging people towards unproductive behaviour. HN has consistently maintained at least a decent quality audience and community by keeping the UI free of bells and whistles, and thusly being unattractive to certain kinds of low-effort users. At this point, any change would probably count as messing with a good thing, so the t…

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Re: Why Ruby is an acceptable Lisp (2005)

#12

Post by behnamoh »

sundarurfriend wrote: post #8
behnamoh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a good point. On a sidenote, I get a weird feeling from HN's simple UI/UX. On one hand, it feels like the old CLI machines that put the focus on "content" - kinda like "do one thing and do it right". On the other hand, reading all the comments, getting notified for replies on comments, etc. is really hard. In this day and age, one would wonder if HN really hates JS (well, except for the upvote button)…

Community building and maintanence is a very tough job, and the simplest of things can end up nudging people towards unproductive behaviour. HN has consistently maintained at least a decent quality audience and community by keeping the UI free of bells and whistles, and thusly being unattractive to certain kinds of low-effort users. At this point, any change would probably count as messing with a good thing, so the t…

I agree with you that HN has maintained a quality audience and community. This is really one of the main reasons I check HN daily.

Although, even top-tier programmers and professionals are eventually "human", and design rules apply to them as well. It's like saying these folks are more comfortable to use some strange user-undfiendly smartphone, while they mostly just use an iPhone instead.

Re: Why Ruby is an acceptable Lisp (2005)

#15

Post by sillysaurus3 »

behnamoh wrote: post #3
steveklabnik wrote: post #2

A classic. Should have (2005) in the title. Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=416589 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=825809 And a follow-up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2279453

I just checked your links and gotta admit, you're right. Although, still I don't see why this has been posted "three" times before! I think HN should add a URL checker in the submit page.

I don't see why this has been posted "three" times before

Posts that are over a year old can be reposted. It's a way to get a fresh perspective on ideas.

Re: Why Ruby is an acceptable Lisp (2005)

#17

Post by sillysaurus3 »

behnamoh wrote: post #12
sundarurfriend wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Community building and maintanence is a very tough job, and the simplest of things can end up nudging people towards unproductive behaviour. HN has consistently maintained at least a decent quality audience and community by keeping the UI free of bells and whistles, and thusly being unattractive to certain kinds of low-effort users. At this point, any change would probably count as messing with a good thing, so the t…

I agree with you that HN has maintained a quality audience and community. This is really one of the main reasons I check HN daily. Although, even top-tier programmers and professionals are eventually "human", and design rules apply to them as well. It's like saying these folks are more comfortable to use some strange user-undfiendly smartphone, while they mostly just use an iPhone instead.

I think they've demonstrated they know what they're doing. Perhaps it's us who should learn from them.

Re: Why Ruby is an acceptable Lisp (2005)

#20

Post by ufmace »

I'm glad to see this, and even more interested that it was written in 2005. I've read lots of rants about how awesome Lisp is supposed to be from Paul Graham and Steve Yegge and all. But I never see anything significant being written in it or using it, so I haven't felt all that tempted to try learning it.

Meanwhile, I've been using Ruby for a while, and the metaprogramming capabilities are pretty cool. It sounds a lot like what all of the Lisp enthusiasts are saying is so awesome about Lisp to me. So I've always wondered what it is that's so awesome about Lisp that Ruby doesn't already have.

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