
What sets a great developer apart from the rest - antonpug
https://antonpug.com/blog/2018/9/11/the-one-thing-that-sets-a-great-developer-apart-from-the-rest
======
peter_d_sherman
What you say is true enough, but, BUT, I'm guessing that you have not used nor
worked with LISP or a LISP-like language yet, so here is the counterpoint
essay to your essay:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)

I'm not submitting this because I'm trying to be mean or anything, I'm trying
to offer you an expanded viewpoint which might assist you in whatever
development goal you might establish for yourself.

Now, usually when this essay is criticized, the criticism comes in the form of
"Viaweb was written in LISP but when it was sold to Yahoo they converted it to
C++ because nobody there could understand it".

To which I have to say:

"Exactly".

Not understanding LISP and LISP-like languages and criticizing them is like
understanding BASIC and shell scripting and criticizing C++, without knowing
C++.

In other words, there's something there.

Also, you might want to read Joel Spolsky's essay:
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-
test-12-s...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-
test-12-steps-to-better-code/) and read point #9: "Do you use the best tools
money can buy?"

I as a programmer, like you, can use any programming language or tool to get
any job done, but inferior tools, unclean code, complexity, and ambiguous
requirements documents cost me something which is far too valuable to spend,
and that is my TIME. If an employer wants to pay for that, great, but my
opinion is that if you can save time without losing software quality, then
whatever you can do to do that is worth it.

But, it's just an opinion.

