
The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007) - olieidel
http://www.shenlanguage.org/lambdassociates/htdocs/blog/bipolar.htm
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matheusmoreira
I think the article describes ADHD rather than bipolar disorder. Selective
attention, difficulty finishing what was started, poor fit for the current
educational paradigms... Sounds like ADHD to me. There's nothing in the
article that can be characterized as mania.

It's still one of my favorite posts though. Really resonated with me the first
time I read it and I think it's just as relevant today.

~~~
kosma
Or just exceptional brilliance. At the extreme end of IQ or similar scales,
aspects of one's very existence become eerily similar to ADHD symptoms -
except the mind isn't understimulated because of chemical imbalance; it's
understimulated because the world is perceived as unbearably mundane.
Similarly, social deficits may be identified as Asperger syndrome when in
reality it's may be a lack of common topics/culture and a disregard for the
monkeylike social dance. It takes a real expert to properly diagnose such
person. See [1], [2].

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Misdiagnosis-Diagnoses-Gifted-
Childre...](https://www.amazon.com/Misdiagnosis-Diagnoses-Gifted-Children-
Adults/dp/0910707677)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Different-Minds-Children-Asperger-
Syn...](https://www.amazon.com/Different-Minds-Children-Asperger-
Syndrome/dp/1853029645)

~~~
matheusmoreira
I agree and personally know two psychiatrists who share these views.

They interpret ADHD as the sign of an intelligent person whose talents should
be cultivated separately. The mass education paradigm doesn't work for them.
There's something highly paradoxical about ADHD: it's an _attention-deficit_
disorder and yet many display _hyperattention_ once they find something they
do like.

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JamesLeonis
I find it interesting that Clojure (and LISPs in general) have enjoyed an
upsurge of attention since this 20th anniversary post. Maybe we're in the
mania phase?

As an anecdote, I've now been on both language spectrums. In large C++
projects I can absolutely attest to the "Needs many people" claim. Now that
I've worked in Clojure on projects of equal importance, it's mind-bending how
much I can accomplish alone.

~~~
pjmlp
Many of modern IDE features go back to Lisp and Smalltalk workstations.

Yet they still don't offer all their capabilities.

Had those environments succeed in the market, the whole development experience
workflow would be much better.

Think of Bret Viktor style presentations.

Sadly due to their prices, many know Common Lisp via the open source command
line compilers, instead of environments that trace back to those workstations
like Franz Common Lisp.

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ontoillogical
I've used this essay as a justification to myself for why I got bad marks so
many times.

Dropping this self-assessment was a big part of what "growing up" felt like to
me.

~~~
alimw
It's funny how there's glamour attached to the idea of being a BBM. It's not
like it tends to end well in practice.

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diminishedprime
While the "BBM" tends to work alone and be frustrated at artiface at every
corner, when you get a few or more working together, some really great things
can come together. I've experienced that firsthand.

~~~
atemerev
These great things will still remain unfinished at 90% completion ;)

(Been there, done that. Feeling incredibly sad after reading this article).

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TurboHaskal
Ah, I used to love this article back then during my Lisp honey moon.

Today it reads like fedora tipping neckbeard porn.

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chriswarbo
Wow, this felt like an eerily accurate cold reading!

I'm currently waiting for some Racket tests to finish, and this morning I
tutored a C/C++ programming lab. The other lab tutor is a C++ hacker, and was
saying how the course this year is much better than when he took it, since
they had to do it in Lisp ;)

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cousin_it
I think finishing projects is a learnable skill, not a fixed personality
trait. It can be learned in quite a short time by repeatedly doing one-day
projects and making them as finished as you can.

~~~
petra
One day seems easy. How does that transfer to keeping an interest in long
project(months/years) ?

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YeGoblynQueenne
>> He can see far; further than in fact his strength allows him to travel. He
conceives of brilliant ambitious projects requiring great resources, and he
embarks on them only to run out of steam. It's not that he's lazy; its just
that his resources are insufficient.

Oh give it a rest already. You're talking about someone who can't finish
anything, and won't even bother to document his half-arsed, half-baked code,
as a "brilliant" mind? And on the basis of, what? That he (it's always a he,
in the article) used to get good grades at school. Not even university, mind-
the brilliance lasted until high school. But, you know, it's all because that
brilliant mind was such a great non-conformist who could see through all us
phonies.

The only thing missing is a magical ring and a birthmark that, once deciphered
using the ring, reads "Only You Can Save the World™". I won't bother to say
where the birthmark is and how the ring fits it.

As if we didn't have enough trouble already with rockstars and ninjas and
people thinking they're artists because they wrote their first for-loop...

~~~
greenshackle2
Yeah, clearly the author chose to label this personality type with a _mental
disorder_ because they think it's _awesome_. Who wouldn't want to be
_bipolar_? The bipolar ninja, that's got a certain ring to it doesn't it?

Did you read to the end? The point, stated explicitly is that the BBM mindset
is _problematic_ :

> So what's the message in all of this? Basically, that there are two
> problems. The problem with the Lisp mindset and the problem with Lisp. The
> problem of the Lisp mindset is the problem of the mindset characteristic of
> the BBM.

I'm not sure what your cutoff for 'brilliant' is, but being able to ace high
school without working probably makes you 1 in 50. From the point of view of a
teacher calling the top student in a grade 'brilliant' is not a huge stretch.
Of course, if you go to a demanding program in a good university, this level
of 'brilliance' is commonplace.

It seems to me the author sees some beauty in this type of mind, but it
doesn't mean they think you should try to be that way. I can understand that;
because I see beauty in fragility too; for whatever reason, I have a soft spot
for people with anxiety problems, and I try to reach out and help them. I
think there is something brilliant about (some of) them, but it doesn't mean I
think they are better than others. Having anxiety makes life harder, as does
having the personality described in this article.

~~~
nonsince
I'm not bipolar, but I have a few friends that are and being bipolar _fucking
sucks_. No-one who glamourises mental illness has real experience with mental
illness.

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joeevans1000
Well, now we have Clojure, ClojureScript, and projects like Untangled. Is Lisp
on its meds now?

PS - I agree it should have been titled 'The ADHD Lisp Programmer'

~~~
kosma
It's the other way round. It's a specific kind of personality that's easily
attracted to Lisp, not a programming language that makes you special.

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0wl3x
excuse my ignorance, but other than emacs, what are the uses of LISP?

~~~
parfe
Lisps can do anything other general purpose language can accomplish. People
still overwhelmingly choose other languages.

~~~
progman
When C++ and Java (the current industry standards) have adopted the last
feature of Lisp then the world will realize that it actually wanted Lisp after
all :-)

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GFK_of_xmaspast
Lots of those kind of people right here on the hacker news forums.

~~~
zengid
Existential proof by contraposition: I would attempt to disprove you, but I
don't wish to sit up from the couch or put down my guitar. Therefore, you are
correct (about me at least).

~~~
zengid
Sorry, Proof by *Contradiction. That's what I get for fooling around with
math.

------
cLeEOGPw
Article main points:

1\. Mental disorder (bipolar or ADHD) is also beneficial for a person
(brilliant bipolar mind).

2\. There's nothing wrong with LISP language, only with people who use it.

