Re:Lisp as the Maxwell Equations of Software (2012)
by sjolsen on Thursday February 12, 2015 @03:47PM
(#9041292)
>With that in mind, I would not want to learn a new language for every project I was a part of
Well, you have to. Every new project comes with its own vocabulary and semantics. You have to learn those whether they're expressed in terms of data/function abstractions or syntactic abstractions. Sometimes—perhaps less often than many Lisp programmers appreciate, but sometimes nonetheless—those new concepts are simply easier to understand when expressed syntactically.
>The majority of programmers cannot design a good language, and if Lisp gives them the opportunity to try then that's a BadThing™
There are many programmers (I say "many" because I haven't actually met most programmers, but "most" might be true, too) who cannot design good data abstractions. Would you consider that [your favorite "OO" language here] allows one to form data abstractions to be a "bad thing?"
Well, you have to. Every new project comes with its own vocabulary and semantics. You have to learn those whether they're expressed in terms of data/function abstractions or syntactic abstractions. Sometimes—perhaps less often than many Lisp programmers appreciate, but sometimes nonetheless—those new concepts are simply easier to understand when expressed syntactically.
>The majority of programmers cannot design a good language, and if Lisp gives them the opportunity to try then that's a BadThing™
There are many programmers (I say "many" because I haven't actually met most programmers, but "most" might be true, too) who cannot design good data abstractions. Would you consider that [your favorite "OO" language here] allows one to form data abstractions to be a "bad thing?"