

Lisp: love the language, hate the people - iamelgringo
http://nothinghappens.net/?p=217#comments

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tac-tics
I visited #lisp only a handful of times, but the one time I tried asking a
question, I received a flamebath along with my answer. If newcomers step on
your toes, channel regulars should have the maturity to deal with it
respectfully. I'm not entirely new to Lisp, and I'm not stupid, so why not
take the time to try and educate instead of discourage? I asked just that, and
I got very close to, "why waste the energy, you'll never learn." Ten minutes
in an IRC channel isn't enough time to make such a judgement.

The article above may be a bit blunt about it, but I think the term
"douchebaggery" is pretty darned accurate from my experience with #lisp.

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Kaizyn
Do you think the problem is that LISP has been tied up with academia for too
long for the community to be friendly?

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pg
I think the problem is mostly imaginary.

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mrevelle
It's not imaginary, but it is unimportant. Spend a day in #haskell, #python,
or #ruby asking basic questions about the language, then repeat in #lisp.

There are helpful people in the CL channel, but most newbie assistance ends
with the veteran delivering a scolding. That doesn't consistently happen in
other language channels, but perhaps it should.

~~~
palish
It shouldn't if said language wants to stay popular. Community will always
trump any flaw.

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mov
I visit #lisp for about a year and the guys are cool. Good discussions with
maintainers of some projects like Zach. I agree with PG, it's mostly
imaginary.

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thomasfl
A pity that just a few eccentric people can actually destroy the reputation of
a programming language.

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downer
<http://programming.reddit.com/info/updn/comments/>

~~~
vikram
That was unfortunate. But the community did jump in and tried too help. There
was no one else saying or doing anything weird. Anyone can do something
stupid. It was stupid and mean.

