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The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

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Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#101

Post by kdmccormick »

slushh wrote: post #76

>The flip side of all that energy and intelligence - the sadness, melancholia and loss of self during a down phase. On that other side, the positive side, is there a self? >Another feature about this guy is his low threshold of boredom. He'll pick up on a task and work frantically at it, accomplishing wonders in a short time and then get bored and drop it before its properly finished. Working frantically at a task do…

Well, sometimes working frantically does get us bipolar folks somewhere, for example:

* To a place where other people see the value and join into the project before we burn out.

* To a place where a discovery or insight is made that is valuable without needing to be thoroughly polished. IMHO this is why so many brilliant mathemeticians are bipolar: once an insight is reached and communicated, value has been created. No debugging or security updates required :)

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#102

Post by generalizations »

convolvatron wrote: post #80
bsima wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I picked up Lisp during my Freshman year ... I do hate the corporate world (and have trouble staying anywhere long) with a passion and would very much like to find a way out. maybe we should work together

I'm going to over-generalize and say that we are a type. while we don't really work that well with people who have different mindsets sometimes, we don't necessarily work very well together either :(

I think that type is "hacker". Welcome to the club!

https://catb.org/jargon/html/personality.html

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#103

Post by the_sleaze9 »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #29
mcluck wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing people say "I have X but I haven't gotten diagnosed yet". Pet peeve: you _think_ you have ADHD but you can't state that you have ADHD without a diagnosis. If you have a piece of bone sticking out of your leg, it's fair to self-diagnose with a broken leg. Mental conditions are much harder to lock down definitively, especially because ADHD, autism, and bipolar all share similar symptoms. My own personal a…

OK, I can say I don't have it if that helps. My point is that I share a lot of the problems that two important people in my life do, and seemingly the same way they think about stuff that other people find very weird, I also do. And it's been this way for a very long time. They are diagnosed professionally with ADHD. So, I think there's a high likelihood, but I don't know, obviously. I was asking for others experienc…

> Call it paranoia, I don't want some medical file marking me as having a disorder or being mentally ill

Not paranoia at all, I had a bored psychiatrist showing a wildly unprofessional amount of skin diagnose me with Bipolar type II after a single 15 minute interview, and now I have serious issues getting life insurance. Even with several other psychiatrists giving opposing diagnoses.

Much better to suspect (and apparently trigger some people's disdain) than let someone write something down in permanent ink.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#104

Post by pif »

rglullis wrote: post #39

I wonder if I could write the story of the BBM once he left the university and went on to work in Corporate Land. My career (if may be called that) can be summarized by a constant swing. On one side, I have a "job" where I start well but after a while I fall out of grace from higher-ups because I inevitably end up calling out their bullshit and/or start seeing the pointlessness of it all and lose interest in progress…

> I inevitably end up calling out their bullshit and/or start seeing the pointlessness of it all

The fundamental point to keep in mind is that it does not matter. The only thing you are entitled to in a corporation is your salary. Interesting projects and things making sense all over are just side perks. They are very nice perks, I have to say, but they don't pay your rent or put food on your table.

Keep this is mind and life will get easier.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#105

Post by ianandrich »

netbioserror wrote: post #63

I've found, as a Lisper, that the secret to being effective and valuable to a company such that you're both irreplaceable and not too much of a drag on the rest of the organization is to pick secret weapons that have slightly more overlap with the normal world than Lisp. Clojure, Nim, Elixir, and more faintly flirt with the true unbridled power of a CL environment, but primarily provide useful abstractions and some f…

I'm also curious about your experiences using nim as a secret weapon in corporate programming.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#106

Post by sph »

kragen wrote: post #91
sph wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those that implemented the unused variable feature are completely unaware that there are two modalities of programming: exploring a problem space, and building a solid product. When you're exploring, you don't want your compiler to stop you in your tracks to warn you about pedantic nonsense. It's not a syntax error that prevents your compiler from understanding, it's just arbitrary restriction that the compiler decid…

it is vanishingly unlikely that ken thompson and rob pike are unaware that people sometimes program to explore a problem space

Ken's first language is pretty tolerant of programmer silliness, maybe too much.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#107

Post by pjmlp »

sph wrote: post #55
_ea1k wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "unused variable is an error" is the most egregious of them that I hate with a passion. Same. That has tripped me so many times when trying out something simple in golang. I get why they are undesirable in the long run, but in the short run I'm often trying out a fragment and don't have the users of every variable written yet.

My hype for Zig died the day Andrew decided to push for that nonsense.

For it was the use of @, Objective-C style, and not having an answer for use-after-free.

If I need to use analysers to fix that, I already have those for C and C++ for the last 30 years.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#108

Post by jwmcq »

cgio wrote: post #14

Not bipolar, but comfortably in the spectrum, and I matched the details pretty well. What he does not mention, which from my point of view is important , is the tendency to go down rabbit holes. Lisp is a shallow rabbit hole and you do get the satisfaction of getting it without an huge investment. And I do love lisp with passion, but never finished anything using it. Python is therapeutic in a way. It can get you to…

I get this. I've been programming Python (mostly) for the last few years, and it's honestly great for getting things done in places where most of what we're asked to do boils down to sticking lego bricks together.

However, I'd strongly disagree with the assertion that lisp is a shallow rabbit-hole. It's probably one of the deepest I've ever been down. There's a good half-century of history there (much of which is even recorded!) - you'll end up learning about four or five different object systems and probably implementing your own, for example - and, even if you want to ignore the past, the accessibility of every level of a lisp system means that I probably know more about how SBCL turns my code into electricity than I ever will about Python, despite never having used the former professionally.

Big big, very deep rabbit-hole filled with a lot of very interesting rabbits.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#109

Post by sph »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #64
sph wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other people in this position, what did you do? Got medicated, and reduced the amount of billable hours to a minimum that lets me make rent, and gives me a ton of unstructured fun time to pursue today's source of dopamine. Today it's one library, tomorrow it's hacking on a project, next week, who knows? In other words, make it so programming is a way to express your creativity, rather than simply your day job.

Thanks for the comment. I've been trying to program creatively again like I used to, but it's hard with a stable job (even though I have quite a lot of freedom in work hours and output by employment standards). > Got medicated Used to be addicted to amphetamines so I think I'll pass on this one. It's effective, definitely, but I don't think I can have a sizeable amount of them at disposal or bad things happen.

Amphetamines have saved my sanity if not my life, so I treat them with utmost respect. And I don't find any urge to take more than my daily dose anyway... I crave my single cup of coffee more than any ADHD medication.

The alternative to get a ton of dopamine is plenty of exercise, clean diet, protein, good sleep and a generous amount of caffeine. I mean, that's good advice for pretty much everybody.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#110

Post by convolvatron »

generalizations wrote: post #102
convolvatron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to over-generalize and say that we are a type. while we don't really work that well with people who have different mindsets sometimes, we don't necessarily work very well together either :(

I think that type is "hacker". Welcome to the club! https://catb.org/jargon/html/personality.html

and to think we used to run this place
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