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I finally understand why I'm not allowed to use Lisp

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Re: I finally understand why I'm not allowed to use Lisp

#71

Post by gnufreex »

kprobst wrote: post #65
gnufreex wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mono pushers keep repeating estoppel meme but nobody ever explained how estoppel would apply to Mono. Microsoft never promised anything more than ECMA spec. They made clear they are not giving anything more. Yet, we know that even basic bits of Mono overstep ECMA http://www.the-source.com/2010/12/more-mono-misinformation-m... So please stop repeating estoppel meme, it is nonsense. Also, attacking all people who show…

I did a search on techrights.org of your username and it seems you're one of the regulars there. I guess paranoia pays off sometimes. The "gnosis" account that posted on this same thread is a, um, friend of yours, I take it? In any case, sorry, but I'm not going to argue this issue with the likes of you. You may have a point somewhere, perhaps, but anyone associated with that blog has about as much credibility vis-a-…

So? What if I visit techrights regularly? If you asked me I would tell you that. I go there because it is good site with well researched information, and if you were less pro-mono biased you would recognize that.

I don't know who "gnosis" is, first saw that nick.

Anyways, if you need to attack people and make this kind of nonsense, it means you have no arguments whatsoever, so you just do what rabid Mono pushers always do: character assassination and libeling of every critic, with heavy use of all kind of fallacies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

C ya

Re: I finally understand why I'm not allowed to use Lisp

#72

Post by gnufreex »

nyellin wrote: post #27
gnosis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been some criticism of Microsoft's "Community Promise", such as this: http://techrights.org/2009/07/09/community-promise-sham/ and http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono and of Mono in general: http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono

In the professional Linux community, almost everyone views Mono-haters as nutters/trolls. If you have real concerns about Mono, I suggest that you contact Miguel de Icaza directly. Email: miguel@gnome.org Twitter: @migueldeicaza ( http://twitter.com/#!/migueldeicaza ) Blog: http://tirania.org/blog/index.html

Well, I am professional and I see Miguel De Icaza as Microsoft zealot and nutter/troll. Person that is "psyched" (see http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/open-source-guru-... )about Nokia going Wp7 can't give unbiased opinion about anything connected to Micorosft, especially anything that he is actively pushing... and he pushes .NET more than Mono these days.

Re: I finally understand why I'm not allowed to use Lisp

#73

Post by forinti »

arnoooooo wrote: post #69

This reminds me of PG's essay on Java, in which he wrote "Java's designers were consciously designing a product for people not as smart as them.". Ben says that smart people should also work with these languages because non-smart people might have to work with the code. I think that is actually what happens a lot in the industry. Smart people who know Lisp, Ruby, Python, etc. still end up coding in Java because that'…

I agree with PG and I also think that Java and C# maintainers are wrong to keep adding features to these languages.

I've done a lot of work with Java (and some with C#) and most developers have a hard time even with original Java's scope rules.

So, if these languages want to be the COBOL of the future, they should keep it simple and dumb. Closures and Generics aren't for most people.

Or they could add some compiler directive for switching on advanced features.

Re: I finally understand why I'm not allowed to use Lisp

#74

Post by davidk0101 »

siika2000 wrote: post #67
ddkrone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only benefit I'm aware of is slightly faster code and even then the dynamic version is almost always more readable and easier to maintain and refactor. The ideal would be a dynamic language with optional static typing but I have yet to see a language like that.

> The ideal would be a dynamic language with optional static typing but I have yet to see a language like that. That would be Common Lisp.

I'm waiting for perl 6.

Re: I finally understand why I'm not allowed to use Lisp

#75

Post by dan00 »

I think the problem of Lisp is, that it's very powerful and very dynamic. As long you're working alone, that's not that much of an issue, but with more developers you need to add more security nets, without the aid of a powerful type system.

Most people love dynamic typing, because they hate the static typing of languages like C++ or Java. Powerful languages also need a powerful type system, that the developer can fully express his intentions, with the aid of a compiler validating them. Mainstream languages should start looking at type systems of languages like Haskell.

Re: I finally understand why I'm not allowed to use Lisp

#76

Post by rikthevik »

j_baker wrote: post #46

I learned something a long time ago. It's far, far easier to dismiss others' code as "complex", "unmaintainable", or "clever" than it is to try and understand the code well enough to figure out whether that code was written that way for a valid reason. It's true whether you're new and approaching a codebase for the first time or whether you're reviewing someone else's code. And no, I'm not saying that it's ok for cod…

I think really good high-level documentation would be a good place to start here. If someone looks at your code and immediately says "wtf", it seems like it would be good form to point them to a great piece of documentation. Without that, it seems unreasonable to ask your colleagues to dive into something well outside what they're used to seeing in that code base.

Re: I finally understand why I'm not allowed to use Lisp

#77

Post by nostrademons »

j_baker wrote: post #50
rorrr wrote: post #20

Kudos to his manager for actually looking at the code and recognizing the problem. Maintainable code is extremely important. Just keep your code simple. Adding another layer of abstraction instead of writing a simple and readable loop (if the language doesn't have accumulators) is not a good solution. I've seen this too many times. Smart developers write complex code, just because they can (and often it does make it…

> Smart developers write complex code, just because they can (and often it does make it shorter), but then mid- and junior-level developer struggle with it. You know, I can't help but be reminded of Harrison Bergeron when I read this. I'm waiting for the day when someone comes up with a handicap for programmers so that we can all write code with the same ability as the least intelligent and least experienced members…

"I'm waiting for the day when someone comes up with a handicap for programmers so that we can all write code with the same ability as the least intelligent and least experienced members of our teams."

Java? ;-)

Re: I finally understand why I'm not allowed to use Lisp

#78

Post by nostrademons »

gsivil wrote: post #17

I find nothing interesting in the original post to be honest. Just somebody that has a superficial impression about C# is complaining. Even the first 25 comments that I read are of no particular interest. Meta: I wildly guess the HN post gets all the upvotes because initally people think that it will be about a google employee not allowed to use Lisp in google.

Meta: That would be this post:

http://coding.derkeiler.com/Archive/Lisp/comp.lang.lisp/2006...

Which I think has been posted on HN before, Ron Garret's popped up a few times here, but it's still a great story.

Re: I finally understand why I'm not allowed to use Lisp

#79

Post by fleitz »

A better question is whose going to maintain all those for-loops that are buggy because human error means even a basic thing like a loop will get screwed up. Managers are always talking about code reuse but as soon as you pass a function, they are like "Woah thats crazy how can we maintain that"

Only managers would think that

  int accum;
  for(int i = 0; i
is more readable and maintainable than...

  arr.sum(x => x)
Oh look and even though I've written a million for loops depending on the language there is a bug because i didn't intialize accum.

Re: I finally understand why I'm not allowed to use Lisp

#80

Post by fauigerzigerk »

fleitz wrote: post #79

A better question is whose going to maintain all those for-loops that are buggy because human error means even a basic thing like a loop will get screwed up. Managers are always talking about code reuse but as soon as you pass a function, they are like "Woah thats crazy how can we maintain that" Only managers would think that int accum; for(int i = 0; i is more readable and maintainable than... arr.sum(x => x) Oh loo…

Are you explaining the difference between code you have to write and debug and code that someone else has already written and debugged?
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