Mattew Butterick has similar concern about Lisp flattery regarding its power and even touch another popularity index (based on GitHub this time and before Clojure), as you can see on [1]. I think that he makes a pretty good argument about Lisp as a non professional programmer who codes (like myself), that can be also be applied to Pharo, connecting power with expressiveness, and later with the documentation and the ecosystem
[1] https://practicaltypography.com/why-racket-why-lisp.html Discourse about alternative programming languages has been also co opted by the "startup fashionist logic" and put them in a contrast with traditional business programming languages, but some times they could make sense also in research, writing and other contexts, where we are trying to build a case for communities of non professional programmers who code and are interested also in accessibility and readability, but from different perspectives. That's the path I'm exploring with Grafoscopio. It has been an important community building tool (despite its early stage and bugs). Cheers, Offray On 25/2/19 8:54, john lunzer wrote: > Thanks, I've read this before but I read it again. The quality of > "power" as Dr. Graham describes it is only useful if it can be accessed. > > If you're a startup and your goal is to make a huge splash and > obliterate your competitors, as he implies, then a nuclear powered > programming language could help. If you work for a large company in a > mixed discipline team with a large legacy of code then a nuclear > powered language with less than upper tier readability is going to > hold your team back long enough for your competitors to "crush" you. > In my experience lisps struggle in the readability department. > > Maybe things are different now than they were in 2001. Perhaps lisps > *do *have great power, but if 18 years has proven anything it's that > the power of lisps is not accessible (and therefor has low utility) to > the vast majority of those who program. On both the TIOBE and PYPL > indexes there are no lisps in the top 20 and only a single functional > language (scala, at 14 on PYPL). Redmonk is more generous, which has > scala at 12 and haskell at 19, but still has no lisps. To be clear I'm > not making any judgement on the "goodness" of lisps or functional > languages. I'm noting trends in an effort to show that choosing a > programming language based only on "power" is not an intelligent choice. > > Readability and accessibility fuel my ability to program effectively, > I have not felt the need for more power. My biggest needs as a > professional engineer (who mostly programs all day) have been better > tools, better organization, and better documentation. Perhaps that is > how I ended up in the Leo community as those three things appear to be > pillars of the community. > > On Monday, February 25, 2019 at 3:05:15 AM UTC-5, Matt Wilkie wrote: > > [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html > > <http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.paulgraham.com%2Favg.html&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNH0azmoEUUGmILOkVA1JqtZ1mLPoA> > > > Thanks > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "leo-editor" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to leo-editor+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > <mailto:leo-editor+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. > To post to this group, send email to leo-editor@googlegroups.com > <mailto:leo-editor@googlegroups.com>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to leo-editor+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to leo-editor@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
