
"My team will be able to program circles around everyone else" (2002) - fogus
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/feyerabend-project/message/252
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angusgr
Yahoo's download limit reached, here's Google's cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:07l8NZL...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:07l8NZL4S44J:tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/feyerabend-
project/message/252)

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bugsy
"The message you requested is temporarily unavailable because this group has
exceeded its download limit. Please try again later." kind of blows my mind.
This is yahoo, not some weird server running on a 4.77MHz processor in
Turkmenistan.

~~~
chalst
<http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2848> # YAHOO!LOCAUST

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swannodette
For some context, <http://www.dreamsongs.com/Feyerabend/Feyerabend.html>

There is a tone of defeatism here. As Alan Kay said, Smalltalk and Lisp tend
to eat their young. Common Lisp is a testament to how great Lisp is but it's
no end game. Alan Kay always said he expected people to make something way,
way, way better. And yet no one did for such a long time.

Luckily there are some Lisps today that are no longer sitting around twiddling
their thumbs.

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ksolanki
I fail to buy this argument -- _Because Lisp is dead, I'll get better
programmers for less money._

~~~
trustfundbaby
Because it makes no sense ... Programmers for dead/dying ususally languages
cost more

~~~
prodigal_erik
It's hard to motivate people to work in terrible old languages that won't
contribute to their market value in the future. But I can believe that people
make exceptions for languages that they love and wish weren't dead.

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comex
> The message you requested is temporarily unavailable because this group has
> exceeded its download limit. Please try again later.

Text anyone?

~~~
akent

      Subject: Re: [feyerabend-project] An introduction to Lisp
      From: "Richard P. Gabriel"
      Date: Tue Aug 27, 2002 1:03 pm
    

At 22:23 +0200 8/25/02, Dirk Riehle wrote:

    
    
      >Choosing CLOS or the like:
      >
      >- you don't get enough people
      >- those people you get cost too much
      >- you are incompatible with the rest of the world
      >- adapters and bug-fixes will always be last for you
    

Though it's not relevant, I would argue like this:

My team will be able to program circles around everyone else. They will be
able to construct rapidly a language specific to the problem we are solving
rather than using a language designed by computer scientists worrying about
their place in history and a herd of library writers working in cubicles a
thousand miles from our business. My team will be able to use a language
without training wheels. Strong typing is for weak minds, and it's exactly
like they say at MIT: Our current popular languages are designed to help
losers lose less.

I will be able to point to various examples where Lisp programmers have
written not only 3-5 times faster, but they wrote things other programmers
thought were impossible. In this regard, I'd tell the CEO, our competitors
will be spending all their time trying to figure out that it's really possible
we're doing what we're doing, because they will be thinking in terms of
customization at compile time or link time, not at runtime.

Moreover, we will be operating where the CEO is focusing on his or her
specialty and not imposing his or her knuckleheaded view on technology.

Because Lisp is dead, I'll get better programmers for less money. I'll be able
to guarantee 50 more IQ points for the same pay. And my guys will be able to
spend their time typing in value not book keeping overhead and typing in type
descriptions because their guys are too stupid to know when they type +
numbers are involved.

Because no one uses Lisp, I'll have my pick of thousands of great, experienced
programmers looking to work for someone with a non-zero IQ, not the ones fresh
out of college with 10 programs under their belts.

I'll be compatible with everything because it is right now. And if someone
throws me a bug, I can code around it in a few minutes. Being a niche market
means we're more proprietary. People will not use Lisp to compete with us
because they are lamebrains listening to the latest fashion statement from Sun
or Microsoft.The open source crowd isn't even smart enough to notice C++, so
they are especially nowhere in the picture.

Of course, no CEO will belive this because every one of them is stupid.

-rpg-

~~~
hessenwolf
Oh gosh it reads brilliantly - it is meant to be ironic, yes?

~~~
dman
Richard Gabriel is the master of writing things that leave that exact question
unanswered. For eg - <http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html>

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colanderman
That post is hilariously arrogant and off-the-mark. "Strong typing is for weak
minds?" Really? I suppose this guy compiles his code by hand too. I would go
out of my way _not_ to work with someone so cocky.

~~~
_pius
_That post is hilariously arrogant and off-the-mark. "Strong typing is for
weak minds?" Really?_

While I grant that that's a harsh statement, would you disagree with what he
says next?

"Our current popular languages are designed to help losers lose less."

~~~
Stormbringer
I consider myself a fairly strong programmer. I have worked with literally
hundreds of programmers over my career. None have been better than me. Now I'm
not the smartest person on the planet, I'm not even smarter than say Sheldon
Cooper, but despite the article author's assertion, you _cannot_ hire someone
who has an IQ 50 points higher than mine.

All that said, I've recently done a couple of months of programming (in a very
restrictive environment) in Javascript, and I _yearn_ for a compiler.

Perhaps these tools do help "losers lose less"... but a tool is a force
multiplier (bad tools are multipliers with a value less than one, and truly
bad tools have negative multipliers :D _Not all tools are bad_.)

In the hands of an expert, the right tool can become a powerful weapon.

~~~
rhygar
"I have worked with literally hundreds of programmers over my career. None
have been better than me."

Really? In every aspect of programming? In every language? This is the typical
prima donna bullshit that pervades this industry. I pity anyone who has to
deal with you on a daily basis.

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dspeyer
This was ages ago. Does anyone know what happened? Was the confidence
justified? Can we learn anything from their experience?

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daniel-cussen
Hey both states the advantages and implies the disadvantages of working with
Lisp. Advantages: dynamic typing, macros ("customization at compile time or
link time, not at runtime.") dealing with bugs, etc. He really knows his shit,
too, especially with regards to how Lisp compiles. So the good news is, he's
right.

But that's the bad news, too. He's right, but not tactful.

This that holds Lisp back in a business setting: the tech is awesome, the
people skills aren't. Entrepreneurs considering doing a Lisp startup would be
wise to address this as part of your strategy.

~~~
colanderman
That dynamic typing and Lisp-style macros are advantages is highly debatable.
Most programmers I've worked with (some of whom are probably in the top 1% of
coders in the world, these include the guys who developed PLT Scheme) would in
fact consider both those features to be _dis_ advantages.

Example counterarguments:

Static typing is far better than dynamic typing. There is nothing you can
express in a dynamically typed language which you cannot express in a
statically typed language, and most of those things can be expressed just as
succinctly thanks to type inference. Further, to use your own words, static
typing provides _debugging_ "at compile time or link time, not at runtime."

Hygienic macros (i.e., macros which gracefully handle identifier collisions)
provide all the same "language-building" features of Lisp-style macros without
mysterious bugs caused by namespace clashes. Furthermore, the "customization"
use case you point out is far better served by either higher-order modules
(a.k.a. functors), which enforce provides-requires relationships at compile
time; and by compile-time inlining of static code (also known as partial
compilation), thus allowing the same language to be used for compile-time and
run-time code.

~~~
jrockway
I'm going to agree with you about dynamic typing. I spend most of my time
programming in dynamic languages, but I spend a lot of that time pretending I
have static types. I waste a lot of CPU cycles making up for the safety
difference between static and dynamic typing. Then I waste even more to be
able to store "hello world" and 42 in the same variable, even though I never
need to do this.

Fortunately, if I care about CPU time, I just use Haskell, which gives me the
syntactic sugar and expressiveness of Lisp with the type safety of ... well
... Haskell.

~~~
chromatic
The question isn't whether you want static types while running or debugging
(or testing). The question is whether you want static types while developing.

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sek
I think i've read this before, maybe from Paul Graham?

~~~
forensic
Well most of the arguments are the same, Richard Gabriel is just less tactful
than pg.

What I want to know is whether Richard P. Gabriel ever had business success
with LISP rather than just academic success. A quick scan of wikipedia doesn't
mention any modern businesses.

~~~
Stormbringer
He raised by my count over 4 million dollars back in the 80s (back when that
was real money), and the company lasted 10 years. If that isn't getting a
business "off the ground", I think your criteria is far too harsh!

But (if I understand the timeline) by the time he wrote that, the prior
business had been dead and buried for 7 or 8 years. Reading between the lines,
I think they attached themselves to a platform that looked good (symbolics) at
the time, but which failed to capitalise on it's potential. Essentially they
were in the accessories aftermarket... and if that market disappears you'll go
down with it.

~~~
kragen
Lucid was the disruptive competitor to Symbolics: rather than building
expensive hardware to run Lisp fast, they built expensive software to make
mainstream hardware (e.g. SPARCs) run Lisp fast. AFAIK they never had a
product that ran on LispMs.

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mahmud
beware, that man is an artist and might not see the world as it is, but as it
should be.

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SSHisForWienies
they believe lisp is secure because its rare. thats kinda strange like driving
a trabant.

(and its still hackable).

