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How I lost my faith in Lisp (2002)

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Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp (2002)

#21

Post by [deleted] »

ArchTypical wrote: post #20
johan_larson wrote: post #18

> BTW, ignorant is not a pejorative term. If you think it is you are ignorant and you need to go look the word up in a dictionary. Did that. The Merriam-Webster, in fact. Here's what they said: > There are several meanings of ignorant, all of which are concerned with a lack of knowledge in some sense; some of these are more insulting than others, and care should be exercised before applying this word to people who yo…

> some of these are more insulting than others, and care should be exercised before applying this word to people who you do not wish to offend This is not in the definition. Please try to stay honest when chastising someone for not being accurate. > a : destitute of knowledge or education > also : lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified > b : resulting from or showing lack of knowledge or intelligen…

[deleted]

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp (2002)

#22

Post by skh »

johan_larson wrote: post #18

> BTW, ignorant is not a pejorative term. If you think it is you are ignorant and you need to go look the word up in a dictionary. Did that. The Merriam-Webster, in fact. Here's what they said: > There are several meanings of ignorant, all of which are concerned with a lack of knowledge in some sense; some of these are more insulting than others, and care should be exercised before applying this word to people who yo…

Far too often people confuse dictionary definitions and colloquial usage. Dictionary definitions always lag colloquial usage. The meaning of words comes from their usage and the quote you referred to seems like someone being intentionally obdurate to linguistic changes. The person acknowledges that there are people who use the word ignorant in a pejorative way.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp (2002)

#23

Post by [deleted] »

skh wrote: post #22
johan_larson wrote: post #18

> BTW, ignorant is not a pejorative term. If you think it is you are ignorant and you need to go look the word up in a dictionary. Did that. The Merriam-Webster, in fact. Here's what they said: > There are several meanings of ignorant, all of which are concerned with a lack of knowledge in some sense; some of these are more insulting than others, and care should be exercised before applying this word to people who yo…

Far too often people confuse dictionary definitions and colloquial usage. Dictionary definitions always lag colloquial usage. The meaning of words comes from their usage and the quote you referred to seems like someone being intentionally obdurate to linguistic changes. The person acknowledges that there are people who use the word ignorant in a pejorative way.

[deleted]

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp (2002)

#24

Post by iplusplus »

iplusplus wrote: post #19
shawn wrote: post #5

Meanwhile, I ported Arc to JS: https://imgur.com/0Ba0NZN If LN turns into anything, it'll be because of Lisp, not in spite of it. It really doesn't matter that the world is phobic to it when you alone are the blacksmith. One could argue "See? It's running in JS. Doesn't that mean Lisp is useless?" Maybe. But macros are a thing. And when you can generate React on the fly, without having to make a class for every singl…

FWIW, React is a built-in feature of the new Arc-in-JS port. Here's how it looks: ( href: "https://news.ycombinator.com" "Hacker News") That lets you merge s-expression syntax with React syntax quite nicely. ( ( ( width: "100%" "Hello, world"))) Here's the output of a REPL session. $ rlwrap bin/lumen-node > (load "arc.l") > (print:compile:expand '( href: "https://news.ycombinator.com" "Hacker News")) React.createElem…

Current code is at https://github.com/lumen-language/lumen/blob/f7bfd4dca71ed1e... if anyone's curious. It's basically a copy-paste from the official arc3.1 release.

(You can diff with the official sources at https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/f01d3f9c661eed055...)

Apologies for the nested replies; wasn't able to edit.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp (2002)

#25

Post by peapicker »

sevensor wrote: post #3

(2002) I believe. I wonder where the author stands now? 16 years is plenty of time to get your faith back and lose it again.

He wrote a followup to that post on his site: http://blog.rongarret.info/2008/02/what-are-programming-lang...

Main quote addressing your question:

"One thing that many people found unsatisfying about my how-I-lost-my-faith posting is that I never really got around to explaining why I lost my faith other than saying that I saw people being productive in other languages. Sorry to disappoint, but that was basically it. What I think needs clarification is exactly what faith I lost. I did not lose faith in Lisp in the sense that it stopped being my favorite programming language. It didn't (notwithstanding that I switched to Python for certain things -- more on that in a moment). What I lost faith in was that Lisp was the best programming language for everyone (and everything), and that the only reason that people didn't use Lisp is that they were basically ignorant. My faith was that once people discovered Lisp then they would flock to it. Some people (hi Kenny!) still believe that. I don't."

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp (2002)

#26

Post by gonehome »

johan_larson wrote: post #18

> BTW, ignorant is not a pejorative term. If you think it is you are ignorant and you need to go look the word up in a dictionary. Did that. The Merriam-Webster, in fact. Here's what they said: > There are several meanings of ignorant, all of which are concerned with a lack of knowledge in some sense; some of these are more insulting than others, and care should be exercised before applying this word to people who yo…

This is a great article that sums out the direction these threads typically go in and why it's generally a waste of time: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7X2j8HAkWdmMoS8PE/disputing-...

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp (2002)

#27

Post by sevensor »

allenbrunson wrote: post #6
sevensor wrote: post #3

(2002) I believe. I wonder where the author stands now? 16 years is plenty of time to get your faith back and lose it again.

you could ask him yourself. these days he goes by the name "ron garret," and he commented right here on this site only an hour ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lisper

Thanks for the tip!

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp (2002)

#29

Post by dragonwriter »

ArchTypical wrote: post #20
johan_larson wrote: post #18

> BTW, ignorant is not a pejorative term. If you think it is you are ignorant and you need to go look the word up in a dictionary. Did that. The Merriam-Webster, in fact. Here's what they said: > There are several meanings of ignorant, all of which are concerned with a lack of knowledge in some sense; some of these are more insulting than others, and care should be exercised before applying this word to people who yo…

> some of these are more insulting than others, and care should be exercised before applying this word to people who you do not wish to offend This is not in the definition. Please try to stay honest when chastising someone for not being accurate. > a : destitute of knowledge or education > also : lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified > b : resulting from or showing lack of knowledge or intelligen…

The claim that a term is not pejorative is a claim about usage and social reception, not definition.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp (2002)

#30

Post by [deleted] »

gonehome wrote: post #26
johan_larson wrote: post #18

> BTW, ignorant is not a pejorative term. If you think it is you are ignorant and you need to go look the word up in a dictionary. Did that. The Merriam-Webster, in fact. Here's what they said: > There are several meanings of ignorant, all of which are concerned with a lack of knowledge in some sense; some of these are more insulting than others, and care should be exercised before applying this word to people who yo…

This is a great article that sums out the direction these threads typically go in and why it's generally a waste of time: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7X2j8HAkWdmMoS8PE/disputing-...

[deleted]
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