
Lisp is for Entrepreneurs - Terhorst
http://bc.tech.coop/blog/060118.html
======
boomstrap
This whole post is complete nonsense.

Taking two examples of applications written in Lisp and trying to shoehorn a
premise to it is ridiculous. Lisp/PHP/Perl/Ruby/Java are all tools. Anyone who
tells you that one house is better than another because it was built with a
different type of hammer would (and should) be laughed at.

Take this quote and substitute Ruby/Rails or Python/Django or even Java/Spring
would give you the same answer and even have a larger base of developers to
draw from.

"Our hypothesis was that if we wrote our software in Lisp, we'd be able to get
features done faster than our competitors, and also to do things in our
software that they couldn't do. And because Lisp was so high-level, we
wouldn't need a big development team, so our costs would be lower. If this
were so, we could offer a better product for less money, and still make a
profit. We would end up getting all the users, and our competitors would get
none, and eventually go out of business."

~~~
Terhorst
Are you saying that if someone built a house with an inflatable mallet and
someone else built one with a nail gun there would be no difference of quality
in the resulting house, or that one wouldn't be completed sooner, or be more
extensible? (Yes, you can laugh at me.)

I agree with you that all languages are tools (I love working with all kinds,
actually). But aren't some tools better at some things than others? Or what
would we need so many for?

I'm not saying Lisp is the nail gun and everything else is an inflatable
mallet, but I do think there is a difference.

What I got out of the article is that Lisp is a tool that worked pretty darn
well in a couple cases. I feel that's a good thing, because I kind of like
Lisp.

~~~
boomstrap
I'm saying whats important is the quality of the resulting house (we maybe
extending the metaphor too far here). If you can make a better/higher
value/more usable house with an inflatable mallet then with a nail gun then
yes that may be the right choice.

"But aren't some tools better at some things than others?"

Absolutely, and note I'm not taking shot at Lisp as a language. My argument is
with the article, there is nothing here that supports his premise that Lisp is
for entrepreneurs. That it was the right choice for a couple of cases? Sure!
but for anyone starting a software business? nonsense.

~~~
Terhorst
I agree on that point: Lisp (or any single language for that matter) is
unlikely to be the right choice for everyone.

------
gibsonf1
I think Lisp is simply the right choice for great applications, whether
entrepreneur driven or otherwise. For Corporations, if the managers don't
understand the value of Lisp, they will opt for different solutions, even if
those solutions destroy the value that Lisp offered. Perhaps the only barrier
to wider Lisp adoption is an education barrier?

~~~
mdakin
I have personally seen Lisp stamped out for political reasons. I had been
tasked with generating C code from a textual description of a finite state
machine. With my boss's permission (also a Lisp programmer) I used scheme to
take in the descriptions and output C code. It hooked right into the Makefiles
and worked well. Despite the fact that the solution worked and that there were
several engineers on staff who were Lisp programmers this did not make it
through review. A senior engineer who had been with the company for a long
time (who'd never programmed in Lisp) had major objections. He pulled the
right strings and we were forced to reimplement it all in C. I suspect one of
real problems for Lisp is the presence of this sort of anti-Lisp person in the
industry.

~~~
ralph
If you had to reimplement in C then it suggests that whatever non-C language
the original was in, e.g. Python, you would have had to re-write it in C.
Otherwise, you would have had the choice to reimplement your Lisp in a more
suitable language than C that was acceptable. Lisp here seems a side issue.

~~~
mdakin
You are probably correct. There were snide remarks made about Lisp in
particular however, like claiming it is not "used in industry" and is thus
"nonstandard". Similar remarks could have been made against any language the
guy DIDN'T know. Regardless of the reasoning there are people like this who
end up stamping Lisp (and other non-dominant solutions) out.

------
mattculbreth
Very cool post. I don't think this is limited to Lisp though. I bet that if a
big company acquired a company whose product was written in Python/Ruby/etc
then they'd consider rewriting into C# or Java. And they'd have the same
issues that Yahoo and Sony had, as expressed in this article.

------
mdakin
With all due respect to the Sony and Yahoo engineers/managers I wonder if the
shortcomings of the reimplemenations have less to do with the choice of
programming language and more to do with the characterestics of people doing
the work. I have a suspicion that the "Lisp startups" of the past tended to be
composed of particularly intelligent people.

------
ced
Counterexample: Reddit was initially written in Lisp, and then rewritten in
Python. For technical reasons.

~~~
ecuzzillo
IIRC their main issues were threading instability in CMUCL on BSD or mac,
which I believe has since been fixed in SBCL. In general, SBCL has come a long
way, partly due to companies that use CL (e.g. ITA) funding its development.
CL is in many ways much more production-ready than it used to be for that
reason. It still has rough spots, but my experience is vastly improved over
what it was 1.5 years ago.

------
vo0do0
I'd say, XP (extreme programming) is for Entrepreneurs. Not only for coders,
for everyone that needs speed and quality that are variables on opposite sides
of the equation.

