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In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

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Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#11

Post by davnicwil »

adriftincode wrote: post #4
jacques_chester wrote: post #3

[2011].

Why do people tag the year on articles? I feel like hackers cling to the “if it’s not new, it’s not worthy” paradigm. Update: Thanks for all the replies, makes sense. Why downvote an honest question?

I wouldn't say it's about not being worthy, it's just very valuable context.

I'd say typically in software, once something is beyond about 5 years old - a library, a resource, a language version - it's very important to be aware of that as your decision to use that thing as-is needs to take that into consideration.

Maybe you decide to use it, maybe not, but you're always better off knowing when it was produced going in than not paying attention to that.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#15

Post by s_Hogg »

Boulth wrote: post #14
s_Hogg wrote: post #13

Why is HN this interested in Lisp anyway? Not saying it's a good or bad language, just don't quite get why it receives as much attention as it does.

Maybe it's because HN itself is written in a dialect of Lisp.

Do you reckon that's all there is to it?

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#16

Post by dreamcompiler »

s_Hogg wrote: post #13

Why is HN this interested in Lisp anyway? Not saying it's a good or bad language, just don't quite get why it receives as much attention as it does.

What organization hosts HN?

From what computer science construct does that organization's name come from?

Who founded that organization?

How did that person get wealthy enough to start seed funding other companies?

Did that person write not one, but two books on Common Lisp?

Just some points to ponder.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#17

Post by sireat »

s_Hogg wrote: post #13

Why is HN this interested in Lisp anyway? Not saying it's a good or bad language, just don't quite get why it receives as much attention as it does.

HN exists because of LISP.

More precisely PG attributed success of Viaweb to LISP (speed of iteration etc)

http://www.paulgraham.com/lisp.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

I am pretty sure the key factor was having a small and talented team. It didn't have to be LISP. They could have used another language they were familiar with.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#18

Post by tosh »

adriftincode wrote: post #4
jacques_chester wrote: post #3

[2011].

Why do people tag the year on articles? I feel like hackers cling to the “if it’s not new, it’s not worthy” paradigm. Update: Thanks for all the replies, makes sense. Why downvote an honest question?

I updated the title to include the 2009 reference. Hope it is a bit clearer now. The notes themselves are from 2011.

Title was: "O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp, and I agreed to write it"

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#19

Post by s_Hogg »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #16
s_Hogg wrote: post #13

Why is HN this interested in Lisp anyway? Not saying it's a good or bad language, just don't quite get why it receives as much attention as it does.

What organization hosts HN? From what computer science construct does that organization's name come from? Who founded that organization? How did that person get wealthy enough to start seed funding other companies? Did that person write not one, but two books on Common Lisp? Just some points to ponder.

Oh really, that's interesting. Is that sort of info widely known among the HN user base and I'm an ignoramus or is it a case of some of the users of longer standing being vocal about Lisp?

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#20

Post by sp332 »

s_Hogg wrote: post #13

Why is HN this interested in Lisp anyway? Not saying it's a good or bad language, just don't quite get why it receives as much attention as it does.

Paul Graham was on the team that wrote Viaweb in Lisp. He wrote very highly of it, so HN attracted a lot of Lisp supporters early on.
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