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How I lost my faith in Lisp

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Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#51
post #35
post #29

I don't speak for the author, but I had the feeling he would retract those remarks today, based on our exchanges here on HN. In other news, STFU and hack. Enough with Lisp politics posts. It's just a language.

Do you know of any startups using a LISP as the primary dev language?

ITA uses Lisp and was bought by Google for $700M.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#52
post #5

Unfortunately, the post spends most of its length on the author's professional history. It is only towards the end in which he spends a sentence or two talking about when he "lost his faith" in Lisp, but still gives not a lot of reasons. Basically, as far as I can tell, there are two major points: he used to think Lisp is great, but (1) no-one else seems to be using it and (2) the perceived superiority of Lisp was de…

> It would be interesting to know what the author thinks of these developments, and whether they could revive his personal faith.

I am very encouraged by the developments of the last 9 years. Clojure in particular is a Good Thing (notwithstanding my on-going allergy to Java), and even the Common Lisp landscape to day is much improved over what it was in 2002. Clozure Common Lisp in particular is wicked cool, and I'm using it for some hacking projects on the side. But when it comes time to do something industrial strength it would still be a very tough call for me even today.

I would love to do a Lisp-based startup, and a CL based startup in particular. If anyone out there shares this interest please let me know.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#53
post #41
post #5

Unfortunately, the post spends most of its length on the author's professional history. It is only towards the end in which he spends a sentence or two talking about when he "lost his faith" in Lisp, but still gives not a lot of reasons. Basically, as far as I can tell, there are two major points: he used to think Lisp is great, but (1) no-one else seems to be using it and (2) the perceived superiority of Lisp was de…

I think you summarized his reasons correctly, but I see his reasons as faulty. (1) assumes that if a technology is good, it will see steady adoption over time. This is not true. See "Why didn't the Romans have hot air ballons" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2264998 About (2) I want to phrase my criticism carefully. To be clear, I'm not saying that Ron is a generally egotistical person, any more than your typical…

> (2) is an egotistical line of reasoning.

To be fair, at the time that reasoning was supported by a fair amount of data. To that point I had built a fairly successful career by doing (by my perception) very little work relative to my peers, and I ascribed that success to the leverage I got from using Lisp. I may have been wrong, but it was a defensible position given the available data at the time.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#55
post #31
post #29

I don't speak for the author, but I had the feeling he would retract those remarks today, based on our exchanges here on HN. In other news, STFU and hack. Enough with Lisp politics posts. It's just a language.

Sadly, these multiple identities are not angry enough to qualify him as a "Mad people of comp.lang.lisp" http://www.tfeb.org/lisp/mad-people.html

I guess I'm not mad enough yet :-)

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#56
post #54

I'd submit http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3208226254834485@naggum.... if my site wasn't blacklisted. "What I want from my Common Lisp vendor and the Common Lisp community"

Why is your site blacklisted?

Sometimes I make fun of Paul Graham.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#58
post #35
post #29

I don't speak for the author, but I had the feeling he would retract those remarks today, based on our exchanges here on HN. In other news, STFU and hack. Enough with Lisp politics posts. It's just a language.

Do you know of any startups using a LISP as the primary dev language?

There's a ton. I'm working at a new company and we use JazzScheme for everything, but it's a spin-off and not a startup.

The author of the original post made an angel investment in a Common Lisp-based startup after they went through YC.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#59
post #5

Unfortunately, the post spends most of its length on the author's professional history. It is only towards the end in which he spends a sentence or two talking about when he "lost his faith" in Lisp, but still gives not a lot of reasons. Basically, as far as I can tell, there are two major points: he used to think Lisp is great, but (1) no-one else seems to be using it and (2) the perceived superiority of Lisp was de…

Update from 2008: http://rondam.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-are-programming-lang...
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