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The programmers who live in Flatland

(blog.redplanetlabs.com)
107 points winkywooster | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.191s | source
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RodgerTheGreat ◴[] No.46183322[source]
A sadly typical flavor of essay: a lisp enthusiast who believes that learning lisp has made them into a uniquely Very Smart Boy who can think thoughts denied from programmers who use other languages. The "blub" paper asserts that there exists a linear hierarchy of goodness and expressiveness in languages, where lisp, by virtue of its shapelessness, exemplifies the pinnacle of expressiveness.

This is a profound misapprehension of the nature of language design. Languages exist within contexts, and embody tradeoffs. It is possible- common, even- to fully grasp the capabilities of a language like lisp and still find it inappropriate or undesirable for a given task. Pick any given context- safety-critical medical applications, constrained programming for microcontrollers or GPUs, livecoding environments where saving keystrokes is king- and you can find specialized languages with novel tools, execution models, and affordances. Perhaps it never crossed Paul Graham's mind that lisp itself might be a "blub" to others, in other situations.

The idea of a linear hierarchy in languages is the true flatlander mindset.

replies(4): >>46183896 #>>46184010 #>>46184033 #>>46189903 #
1. wrs ◴[] No.46183896[source]
“Common, even”? Citation needed. I’ve worked closely with hundreds of developers over the years and maybe two of them made a conscious, knowledgeable choice whether to use Lisp for something.

You’re even sort of making the same point. Specialized problems need specialized tools. How do you write those specialized tools? Start from scratch, or just make a Lisp package?