The article was written in 2012. The author seems to write mostly in CHICKEN Scheme now. Half a year ago he stopped work on his project Cloje, which aimed to reimplement some useful features of Clojure in both CHICKEN Scheme and Racket.
It has been said elsewhere already, but this person picked up Common Lisp, got frustrated with it, tried to save it when no one wanted it to be saved, and then gave up after two months. A whole lot of sound and fury.
Meh. Young developer discovered CL, found compromises and warts and full of their own rightness they set out to put things as they saw fit. No one jumped on their bandwagon.
So what? Some Common Lisp’s old timers agree with Steve Yegge that Lisp is not an acceptable Lisp. But so what? I’m curmudgeonly, I suppose, in thinking that you can write in it (I have in both CL and Chicken Scheme) and in some ways using a Lisp is nicer than other languages I use more frequently but other times gritty decisions and implementation choices irritate you. This lack of ideal diamond-like perfection is notable why? Because it’s not notable, it’s common in other languages to be annoyed by some quirk. So what. Write your personal library to cover these spots and move on.
Paul Graham is a major threat to Common Lisp’s continuation as a language. Even though he doesn’t code anymore and used his own Lisp for Hacker News, Graham’s turn toward the dark side risks painting the language itself as antiquated and exclusionary (which is not to say that it is). Also, after ~2018 when enough Enron-type events hit YC companies and the YC leadership can’t dodge accountability (as they did with Zenefits) the risk of any YC association will be so toxic that the Lisp community will probably have to formally disavow Paul Graham and Y Combinator.
The article was written in 2012. The author seems to write mostly in CHICKEN Scheme now. Half a year ago he stopped work on his project Cloje, which aimed to reimplement some useful features of Clojure in both CHICKEN Scheme and Racket.
It has been said elsewhere already, but this person picked up Common Lisp, got frustrated with it, tried to save it when no one wanted it to be saved, and then gave up after two months. A whole lot of sound and fury.
Meh. Young developer discovered CL, found compromises and warts and full of their own rightness they set out to put things as they saw fit. No one jumped on their bandwagon.
So what? Some Common Lisp’s old timers agree with Steve Yegge that Lisp is not an acceptable Lisp. But so what? I’m curmudgeonly, I suppose, in thinking that you can write in it (I have in both CL and Chicken Scheme) and in some ways using a Lisp is nicer than other languages I use more frequently but other times gritty decisions and implementation choices irritate you. This lack of ideal diamond-like perfection is notable why? Because it’s not notable, it’s common in other languages to be annoyed by some quirk. So what. Write your personal library to cover these spots and move on.
Paul Graham is a major threat to Common Lisp’s continuation as a language. Even though he doesn’t code anymore and used his own Lisp for Hacker News, Graham’s turn toward the dark side risks painting the language itself as antiquated and exclusionary (which is not to say that it is). Also, after ~2018 when enough Enron-type events hit YC companies and the YC leadership can’t dodge accountability (as they did with Zenefits) the risk of any YC association will be so toxic that the Lisp community will probably have to formally disavow Paul Graham and Y Combinator.