Hey Dimitris, Thanks for the reaction, although it is not the one that I expected ;-)
I did a lot of Common Lisp programming in the past, including publishing several open source projects. So yes I know that community. And yes it has an aura of elitism about it and a reputation of being unfriendly to newcomers; whether this is true or not is should not be discussed here. Smalltalk has a number of principles ( http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/smalltalk.html ) that are quite different; one of the main goals is to empower its users by offering a comprehensible system. My point of view and conviction is that positive energy and enthousiasm drive open source. I recognize it in the Pharo community. Sven On 27 Jan 2012, at 10:12, dimitris chloupis wrote: > This article is really encapsulates the attitude and what is wrong with > programming in general. The attitude of superiority and intelligence that > seems to plague coders and being the biggest obstacle to progress. And what > biggest proof of lack of progress than the fact that Lips is probably the > very best that programming languages have to offer. 40 year old technology, > how sad that is ? Actually if there is one thing thats driving the coding > community is lack of enthusiasm, is about sticking to what is already there , > is the fact of being "practical" and "realistic" about code in general. How > much progress we have seen the last 40 years ? Sure its alot , but what > happens if you take games out of it , how much hardware would have progress ? > How much software ? Very little. > > If you take out games that exercise a clear push to graphics and processing > power and complex data manipulation approaches , AI and many other things , > the rest of software out there , if you remove some exceptions here and > there, is the same boring stuff which makes you wait for a year to add a > single feature you need with a dozen more you don't need. > > Its not enthusiasm that drives coding, its money and profit. > > Then we arrive at the open source phenomenon, which I agree its great and > amazing and where exciting stuff really happens. But even open has some major > issue to resolve. First is to anyone surprise is that all that open source is > rarely used and recycled, most open source projects seem to start from > scratch , rarely using source from other projects. And then of course there > is the big issue of licence , its open source, but its not really open ... > GPL as an example of a licence driving open source back instead of forward. > > For me the main problem with is the whole aura of "elitism" , what better > example than Lisp, where beginners are attacked and be excluded. It took me 4 > years to really get into Lisp after hearing about because of all the bad > attitude. Its the whole motivation to prove that coding is for "smart people" > and not "normal" people as he mentions in his article. There is something > "mysteriously" superior about coders .... The only thing I find "mysterious" > about coders is that they think they are "superior" or somewhat special. They > are not. > > And if we can really kick all that non sense outside coding, if we can make > coding for "stupid" , "normal" people and open source project non "VIP Clubs" > , if we really make coding inviting for people then maybe just maybe we will > see open source that instead of 10 developers and 1 million user will have 1 > million developer that are also users. > > Of course in the end what is wrong with the coding community is not detached > with what is wrong with the world and human attitude in general. > > Saying that I am not saying there not some amazing projects out there and > some great people, but I really cant share his enthusiasm and optimism. > > PS : he seems to complain a lot about the forks of Lisp. Is it not Lisp a > factory of programming languages ? I agree with him that those should not be > called Common Lisp if they do not conform but I disagree that their existence > is a bad thing. You cant go forward if you dont reinvent the wheel. Even > though "reinventing" seems to be a forbidden word in coding. > > From: Sven Van Caekenberghe <s...@beta9.be> > To: "Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr Development" > <Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr> > Sent: Friday, 27 January 2012, 10:18 > Subject: [Pharo-project] Enthousiasm is the main currency among developers > > The following 10 year old Usenet article is quite interesting: > > http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4563e504dba92253 > > Although it is quite long and partly about Common Lisp, its main point is > that enthousiasm and positive energy are the main/natural currency among > developers. I think that this is also the main driving force behind Pharo. > > The author is Erik Naggum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum), a > programmer and (in)famous, provocative participant to many discussions. He > died a couple of years ago. > > Sven > >
