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The programmers who live in Flatland

(blog.redplanetlabs.com)
107 points winkywooster | 1 comments | 27 Nov 25 15:44 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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libraryofbabel ◴[07 Dec 25 16:34 UTC] No.46182942[source]▶
Or perhaps, just perhaps, the true higher-dimensional move is realizing that choice of programming language isn’t usually the critical factor in whether a project, system, or business succeeds or fails, and that obsessing over the One True Way is a trap.

It might surprise the author to learn that there are many people who:

1) Have tried lisp and clojure

2) Liked their elegance and expressiveness

3) Have read through SICP and done most of the exercises

4) Would still choose plain old boring easy-to-read always-second-best Python for 90% of use-cases (and probably Rust for the last 10%) when building a real business in the real world.

The article could really benefit from some steel-manning. Remove the cute Flatland metaphor and it is effectively arguing that lisp/clojure haven’t been universally adopted because most programmers haven’t Seen The Light in some sort of epiphany of parentheses and macros. The truth is more nuanced.

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ModernMech ◴[07 Dec 25 17:21 UTC] No.46183303[source]▶
> The article could really benefit from some steel-manning. Remove the cute Flatland metaphor and it is effectively arguing that lisp/clojure haven’t been universally adopted because most programmers haven’t Seen The Light in some sort of epiphany of parentheses and macros. The truth is more nuanced.

The talk I posted from Alan Kay is the steel man. I think you've missed the essence of TFA because it's not really about Clojure or lisp.

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libraryofbabel ◴[07 Dec 25 17:35 UTC] No.46183427[source]▶
You may need to explain more? I don’t think I missed the big idea - the metaphor of a separate plane or higher dimension that contains ideas not expressible in the ordinary one is a nice metaphor, and does apply well to some things (Kuhn’s paradigms in history of science come to mind, e.g. Newtonian Mechanics versus Relativity). I just don’t think it really applies well here. What business concepts or thoughts can you express in Clojure that you can’t express in Python or Rust?
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xigoi ◴[07 Dec 25 18:28 UTC] No.46183835[source]▶
> What business concepts or thoughts can you express in Clojure that you can’t express in Python or Rust?

If you only think about programming languages as a way to make money, the analogy of being stuck in Flatland is perfect.

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1. dap ◴[07 Dec 25 21:25 UTC] No.46185302{3}[source]▶
I’m sympathetic to looking down on the obsession with money. But there’s something deep and important about the monetary element. Engineering is about solving real-world, practical problems. The cost is a real factor in whether a potential solution is a useful one.

I think the money question is a red herring here. I’d phrase it more like: what problem in a user’s problem space is expressible only like this? And if the only user is the programmer, that’s alright, but feels more aligned with pure academia. That’s important, too! But has a much smaller audience than engineering at large.