Do you find the idea of funding Common Lisp Open Source abhorrent? Because that is the primary focus of my work and my life.
Do you think this would have more intrinsic value if someone else promoted it for me? And I have never understood the hate against relevant self-promotion. Why don't you want value creators to promote their work themselves?
No and no. If someone else promoted it for you, I still would've flagged it as spam.
The problem with self promotion is not with you, or any one in particular, but in a tragedy of the commons. I don't want HN to be filled up with hundreds of requests of self-promotion.
Yes, that you should be better able to justify why you are the right person for the job; after all, it is you who is asking for money and questioning the competence of others. In any case, you are not able to convince me, and on the basis of the other comments one can assume that this also applies to others. It's not enough that you are very convinced of your own abilities.
My CV and other writings and most especially my work itself pretty extensively justify that I'm the right person for the job. Of course, it's probably pretty hard to tell without significant Common Lisp expertise...
"Graham received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Cornell University[7][8] (1986).[9] He then attended Harvard University, earning Master of Science (1988) and Doctor of Philosophy (1990) degrees in computer science.[7][10] He has also studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.[7][10]"
It states: "Successful college dropouts are not rare in Silicon Valley. The current president of Y Combinator is one." This is merely an observation of his and says nothing about his personal attitude towards dropouts. But you have addressed him in your appeal, so take your chance.
You don't need to be a race car driver to debunk a sales man trying to tell you "This is the best car in the world!".
My advice to you is to be humble, you're clearly passionate about Lisp and turn that into a positive thing. Saying Lisp is the best language in the world is a sweeping statement, something a snake oil salesman would put across.
I first used Lisp more than thirty years ago (back then on the VAX), but I still don't understand why it is supposed to be the "best programming language" (as some people continue to claim). It is not even obvious to me how to recognize a programming language as the "best" one. The advantage of the simple syntax is paid with several disadvantages. Praising Lisp for its simple syntax is like praising a protein for its simple structure consisting only of a chain of amino acids.
Fairly extensive advocacy pieces already exist, and we need even more sophisticated ones, and better infrastructure overall, and it would be much easier to do that with proper funding.
It does not help to "prove" an assertion by making further unsubstantiated assertions.
Why is Lisp the "best programming language"? How can we recognize a programming language as the "best" one at all? Why do "we need even more sophisticated" extensive advocacy pieces? What "better infrastructure" is required for what purpose?
> It does not help to "prove" an assertion by making further unsubstantiated assertions.
Exactly, so stop doing that, then. Including sealioning.
> Why is Lisp the "best programming language"?
First, the best programming language is Common Lisp, not just any Lisp. Second, I already gave hints towards answering your question above, but you do have to do your homework if you want to even have a chance at understanding.
> How can we recognize a programming language as the "best" one at all?
Easily, if you understand the best programming language and see that all others are blub.
> Why do "we need even more sophisticated" extensive advocacy pieces?
Because then we can just point non-believers like you at it to automatically win all arguments.
> What "better infrastructure" is required for what purpose?
Have you even read the Common Lisp Revival 2020 Fundraiser pitch? I encourage everyone to do so, and urgently.
It is chaotic, I'll give you that. This is a direct reflection of the chaotic state of the Common Lisp community and of all the hard work that is going to be required to bring it to a state of dignity.
I am actively working on bringing about this change, and although I am already fairly effective despite the constant and increasingly blatant sabotage and almost total lack of funding, I would be quite a bit more effective with at least some minimal funding.
For instance, 1000$/month would be effectively infinite money for me at this time. I'm not exactly asking for the moon here...
The point of the fundraiser is to enable me to concentrate almost all my energy on Common Lisp Open Source instead of having to divert energy elsewhere due to financial concerns.
Given the overall context, the direct and substantial benefit to the Common Lisp community of me getting at least minimal funding ought to be obvious.
The most immediate effect of me starting to look for a job would be to significantly reduce the energy I can spend towards Common Lisp Open Source.
Basically, I already have the dream job, but now I just need to get paid at least a bit. Even a small fraction of a "real" salary would be truly life-changing!
I understand its value as well as I believe I need to in order to do good work. I'm sure you hold beliefs that are different from mine, and I think that diversity--and the fact that we can talk about this stuff honestly and respectfully--is what makes our industry great.
I am creating tons of Common Lisp community resources that definitely help attract a more diverse audience to Common Lisp, incidentally. (Not everyone is comfortable with the "pop up in chat and ask experts" model.)
tl;dr: I'd very much like a "noprocrast front-page only" or "comment threads ignore noprocrast" checkbox.
I have a huge noprocrast.
Having to /logout just to check out a story or its comments that I got linked from somewhere else (and that I know I really want to check, specifically) is really annoying.
To me, this is a completely different use-case than browsing stories on the front-page. Browsing of the front-page is a significant threat to my productivity, hence the huge noprocrast. Browsing of stories I have a direct link to is not a significant threat to my productivity.
In Common Lisp we have optional type declarations, and a common strategy for implementations (for SBCL, say) is to treat such declarations as assertions by default, leading to more safety, and for performance-sensitive parts of the code you can "(locally (declare (optimize speed (safety 0))))", which makes the type declarations act as performance optimizations for that part of the code.
