If Lisp is so great... \ stacker news ~mostly

If Lisp is so great...mihaiolteanu.me/if-lisp-is-so-great

3402 sats \ 7 comments \ @elvismercury 26 Jan mostly_harmless

I think this is the most useful thing I've ever read about bitcoin that has nothing at all to do with bitcoin, but rather, about the complexities of the world, the web of interlocking forces that lead to macro action, even when it seems, from certain points of view, that these outcomes are pathological and incomprehensible.

"Best" sometimes means similar to what we already know and do, only better, easier to use, more powerful, more popular. It becomes harder and harder to change one's mind if one gets used to a certain way of doing things for a long period of time. Take the bike gangster again trying to sell you a bike saddle. The natural, instinctive thing to do when one tries to increase the posterior comfort is to use more cushioning. That works in normal scenarios, like a couch, but not in a road bike. After a certain time threshold, like two hours, comfort increases not by adding cushioning but by removing it. It is not intuitive. Taking an endurance eight hours ride is a completely different sport than a ride in the park. Instinct and past experience does not translate to the new endeavor.

The examples are simple and evocative. Aside from a dig at Jordan Peterson, which is annoying and stupid coming from someone who presumably has never actually read him (take your own advice on that one, bro), it's a useful meditation on why the answers to why the world is fucked up in the myriad ways in which it's fucked up aren't simple; or at least, the issues are not simple to address at scale.

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1255 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 26 Jan

Great read.

I think the subtle and common implication that Lisp isn't widely adopted because it's suited to the smart, brave, and experienced, and that the majority of programmers aren't these things, is wrong. Lisp suffers from too much of a good thing, expressiveness, and not enough of a "bad" thing, opinion. The post intends to consider things like this, but still parrots its forefathers by placing Lisp's failure on the supposed weak hands of the market and leverages relativism to avoid concluding that Lisp sucks in substantial ways.

Modern software is collaborative and when everyone has their own preferred way of doing things, none of which is clearly better, composing complex systems from everyone's unique self-expression in code is chaos. Lisp shines when individuals can own entire verticals of a system and are committed to maintaining them, but is impossible to use in a world where programmers are composing code from the work of tens of thousands of people.

Lisp is only the greatest programming language when transaction costs between collaborators are low or nonexistent which is to say, in modern applications at least, it's practically never the greatest programming language.

298 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 26 Jan

Modern software is collaborative and when everyone has their own preferred way of doing things, none of which is clearly better, composing complex systems from everyone's unique self-expression in code is chaos.

Under-rated take -- this is why I'm so taken w/ the Perl vs Python attitudes: There's more than one way to do it vs There's one right way to do it. Everyone doing a Grateful Dead style jam session instead of consolidating around a small number of paradigms / patterns / templates is maddening in a collaborative setting. I used to be so guilty of this, inventing all this cool shit that other people didn't understand and wouldn't invest in understanding. For so long I thought they were the ones being dumb.

And yet, if you're the one jamming, and it's you and a small merry crew, what a pleasure.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 27 Jan

Have you written code in golang? It's take is nearly there's only one way to do this. Golang removes expressiveness wherever it can.

I swear it's designed to make engineers easy to replace.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 26 Jan

in substantial ways

*in a substantial way

I say this all as a huge lisp fan and I know I'm picking a fight with a minor and personal point of the post. I agree with the post's sentiment broadly. I just wish lispers felt that lisp's lack of use might be solvable so I could stop using inferior languages.

1000 sats \ 2 replies \ @brandonsbytes 26 Jan

(if (everyone-is-using-lisp)
    "All life’s problems are solved."
    "There may be various cultural and social reasons.")

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @brandonsbytes 26 Jan

to give a more serious answer. I really enjoy writing in lisp. there is something special to it when you get going. But, in a web dominated world, javascript just can’t be avoided, and trying to do gymnastics to not write javascript just makes life an environment configuration hell. maybe there is a lisp to js interpreter that can solve all life’s problems by compiling to javascript, jsx, etc.

319 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 26 Jan

For me, the friction that gets added when you're doing Lisp and nobody else is cannot be emphasized enough. If your job is to accomplish something useful for somebody else, and you have to coordinate with other humans, directly or indirectly, you are setting yourself an uphill journey using tools that others don't understand.

Cutting yourself off from 'society' is a super duper duper aggressive play that works out badly almost all of the time. It has its place but you better be damn sure that you know what place that is.