

Being too successful is one of life's biggest risks (2004) - zachbeane
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/a10d0e7d8e7354b2

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pg
Lisp Machines weren't that successful. I was their target user, and I ditched
Symbolics to use Lucid on Suns at the first opportunity.

The Lisp Machine software was appallingly baroque. Everything had every
possible feature. There was no design, just implementation, and lots of it.
The manuals took up a whole shelf, and it was generally faster to write
something yourself than to find the predefined function that did it.

A lot of (arguably most of) the badness of Common Lisp is Lisp Machine culture
showing through.

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shimon
This is a good example of hacker writing in 10 paragraphs the sort of thing
that has often been diluted into a 250-page business book.

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jlefo7p6
The amazing thing is that there is a lot of repetition even at 10 paragraphs.
Some of the other comments here sum it up in twitter-sized chunks.

The missing piece is how to identify over-specialization, and it's missing
because it can't be usefully generalized.

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Alex3917
"The missing piece is how to identify over-specialization, and it's missing
because it can't be usefully generalized."

If you read the literature on selective breeding they have extensive
methodologies for avoiding genetic problems. If you just want a quick
overview, Temple Grandin's book "Animals in Translation" has a couple of
really entertaining chapters on the subject.

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jlefo7p6
That book looks hugely interesting--thanks for the recommendation!

We've been using biological metaphors in this discussion, but I'm not sure we
can extend them this far.

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biohacker42
Being too successful is a funny way of describing premature optimization and
the risks behind great yet narrow specialization.

Specialists are by definition exceptionally successful in exceptional
circumstances. I don't think that makes them too successful. It just makes
them high risk-high reward takers.

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snorkel
The example cited is not death by too much success but rather death by not
diversifying the product line.

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keefe
The post made some interesting points about technical success not equating to
real world success, but the whole article suffers from a poor definition of
the word.

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ojbyrne
Funny, at Toastmasters last night our table topic was "what if you had a
different mother?" and we got to pick moms from a random list. My random mom
was Angelina Jolie, and I think I made a well-reasoned case that I would have
fucked myself to death.

My point is that parent's success probably outdoes your own success.

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imp
Thanks, I'm going to use that Table Topics theme next time it's my turn.

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khandekars
Innovator's Dilemma?

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ngvrnd
high degrees of optimization lead to fragility. look at the current financial
situation for an example.

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ajju
Anyone know more about the author Erik Naggum? I have run into seen some old
posts from him on the Python list and now this. A simple Google search reveals
he is an academic/writer from Norway but not much more.

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patrickg-zill
He is a huge presence on comp.lang.lisp . Not sure about his prowess as a
programmer however.

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c00p3r
"Worse Is Better" again? =)

