Re:LispyScript: A JavaScript With Lispy Syntax And Macros
by ken on Friday September 21, 2012 @06:06PM
(#4556128)
> Thought experiment: What's the #2 complaint newbies make about Lisp? And how much longer did it take you to answer that question than #1?
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but the perennial #2 complaint is "There aren't any libraries!", and my response is typically the same (exasperated) answer as for #1: "You've written maybe 10 lines of Lisp in your life -- I've written several orders of magnitude more than that, and I can say that it's simply not an issue, and I wish the libraries we had in $(MAINSTREAM_LANGUAGE) were as high quality".
(I admit I am not a very good ambassador for Lisp.)
#3 is always "Who's going to maintain it?", at which point I remind them that more than half the team they've hired didn't know $(MAINSTREAM_LANGUAGE) when they started here, either, so apparently learning new languages isn't a showstopper.
There is no #4, because at this point they usually stop talking to me, and get that "He's one of those weird Lisp guys" look on their face, and politely make it clear that regardless of how many objections I can answer, Lisp will never be used for anything except Emacs.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but the perennial #2 complaint is "There aren't any libraries!", and my response is typically the same (exasperated) answer as for #1: "You've written maybe 10 lines of Lisp in your life -- I've written several orders of magnitude more than that, and I can say that it's simply not an issue, and I wish the libraries we had in $(MAINSTREAM_LANGUAGE) were as high quality".
(I admit I am not a very good ambassador for Lisp.)
#3 is always "Who's going to maintain it?", at which point I remind them that more than half the team they've hired didn't know $(MAINSTREAM_LANGUAGE) when they started here, either, so apparently learning new languages isn't a showstopper.
There is no #4, because at this point they usually stop talking to me, and get that "He's one of those weird Lisp guys" look on their face, and politely make it clear that regardless of how many objections I can answer, Lisp will never be used for anything except Emacs.