I'm also a fan of old, obscure artifacts such as Lisp - heck,
sometimes I feel like I'm becoming one myself. I did my graduate AI
research using Franz Lisp in the early 1980s and was fortunate to have
the opportunity to use Lisp machines in corporate R&D for several
years before the onset of "AI Winter." I really enjoyed the language,
but because of a backlash against the excess AI hype, Lisp fell out of
favor and industry moved toward more "modern" languages such as C++
(ouch). Lately, I've become facinated with Common Lisp and have
started learning it in my spare time. My gut feeling is that despite
the hype its ardent supporters such as Paul Graham spout, claims of
greatly improved programmer productivity from Lisp have real merit.
Besides, there is a certain charm to using a language that is older
than me - this year Lisp celebrated its 50th birthday (see www.lisp50.org
) exactly one week before I celebrated my 50th birthday. Although it
has been pronounced dead quite a few times, as one Lisper put it,
"Lisp doesn't look any deader than usual to me."
;; Gary
On Dec 25, 2008, at 8:11 PM, glen e. p. ropella wrote:
Thus spake Douglas Roberts circa 12/25/2008 04:27 PM:
IMO, Age and Obscurity (in languages, at least) are mutually
reinforcing
resonant death knells.
Naaa. I'm a big fan of old, obscure artifacts. They flesh out the
context through which homogenous fad-followers plow. It seems like
our
(the US) bias toward forgetting history and diversity and teaching
only
the lowest common denominator, most current fad, or toward the most
likely future is the primary reason we have a trash culture. Rather
than re-sole that old pair of boots or fix the transmission in that
old
car, we prefer to junk the old stuff and buy brand new stuff (usually
made in China).
The hip and trendy fads are great for preoccupying the teenager's (or
politician's) mind; but for any serious work, one should consider as
much historical context as possible in order to make wise decisions in
the present.
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