He's a big data consultant, and all he has is a hammer :-).

I've explained a bit longer than your 'wtf'. Perhaps you can explain to me applications where lisp is the best fit?

Almost every website or software running a business I can think of runs sql. The very small few that don't, google for example, run on c++ and assembly.

So, in 2012, with gigs of ram and postgres, why would I use lisp?

Dude, you advertised on here 36 days ago that you are a Lisp contractor (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3784418) -- WTF?

Why WTF! I'm looking for AI type work, which is much much rarer than sql work, which was my point. You wouldn't use lisp for that either (matlab/numpy followed by c optimizations is used there).

Because 1 hour ago you said:

Why not just do relational programming - prolog or sql. The lisp weenies still don't get it.

And now you've peppered the entire thread with non sequiturs and off-the-wall droppings. Please take a break.

I'll plead WTF on that.

I'm simply trying to tell the kids on here that SQL is great and ROR/LISP/NoSQL worship around these parts is misguided. No 'droppings' in that.

Yes, I write Lisp on my resume to make me look like a stronger candidate. I learnt it a few years ago for fun, that's all (I'm not a lisp flip-flopper). Just want to put the advice out there to be a relational weenie (instead of lisp weenie).

Your point is a complete non-sequitur in this thread. Lumping Ruby on Rails, Lisp and NoSQL together is non-sensical. One is a framework for building web applications, the other is a family of programming languages with over 50 years of history, and "NoSQL" is a bad name for highly scalable data storage methods which abandon the relational model.

What planet do you live on? Your comments are comprised entirely of droppings. This post had nothing to do with any of those topics until you arrived; it's about a way to abstract operations over collections of data that has some cool properties. You then came in unprompted and attempted to troll the whole world about your pet peeve.

If you have something to say about the actual post, then please say it. Otherwise, get out.

Possibly a chatterbot with all the non sequiturs and AI references and previous postings about "bots" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=808240).

Because many programmers are not in the website business. I'm a scientist, working with long-term simulation models. My problem is trying to find a good model representation of the data that I observe. I keep my eyes open towards probabilistic relational programming languages (such as http://www.openbugs.info ), but so far I haven't found a way to apply it to my work.

Lisp is useful to me (more useful than ruby or C was), predominantly because I can work with emacs/swank/slime and change and query my program while I'm observing its output.

How come you're not using matlab/numpy?

I think Twitter is using Clojure now that they've acquired BackType.