BG, This kind of thing really burns me up. They trust you to implement the thing, but they don't trust you enough to pick the tools to implement the thing with. It's like telling your plumber what kind of pipes and wrenches to use. You wouldn't dare, unless you were a plumber already. The problem with trying to figure out how to convince them is that it assumes they're rational, but if they were rational, they would just trust you or hire someone else they trust more.
Oftentimes our web clients call us up to complain about the color of the website, so we change it. The color is about the only thing about their websites that they actually understand, so it's the thing they have to gripe about—it gives them the feeling they are really in control. I bet that's all these "advisors" want, is to feel like they're in control of you. If any of us were particularly good at this kind of manipulation game, we would be terrible programmers, wouldn't we? Computers are easy to control, you just tell them what to do, but with people you have to do all of this irrational stuff. :) I have two ideas. The first one is to try to change the focus from the language to something else about the system which is about as important to you as the color. Then give them full control over that detail. It'll be annoying and frustrating (they *will* insist on changing it randomly during development), but if it works at least you'll get to program in Clojure and get it done faster. My second idea is to somehow paint selecting Clojure as a form of rebellion, that it raises the stakes a little but ultimately the reward will be a product which gets to market faster, is easier to change, and requires fewer programmers in the first place. In other words, to paint them as going off the beaten path, taking a (calculated) risk and that they're sexier people if they take it and boring if they don't. After all, if everyone went with the flow, there would never be a breakthrough, and that's what startups are all about. There are plenty of excellent technical reasons which others have pointed out, but I think it would probably be easier to win them over with style or by granting them some other kind of control, or both. On Jun 24, 2009, at 11:59 PM, Baishampayan Ghose wrote: > Hello, > > So I have been a Common Lisp user for quite sometime and at my earlier > work we managed to build a state-of-the-art Travel portal in CL with a > very small team of CL programmers. > > This was all fine except one thing. The management never really > believed > in Lisp and they eventually replaced the whole Lisp team with 3x Java > programmers and are now rewriting the perfectly fine system in Java. > > That was my earlier job. > > Now I am at the moment doing a startup and I was thinking of using > Clojure because it has the best of both the worlds. It can use Java > libs, is a Lisp and is heavily geared towards concurrent programming; > making it one of the most modern and pragmatic programming languages > at > the moment. > > This decision was based purely on the merit of Clojure and not > because I > just wanted to do some Lisp programming. I seriously believe that > Clojure can really help us in building the kind of concurrent > application we want to build. > > But then, there is another problem. The advisors of the current > startup > (who were techies in their time, but now are highly successful > people in > the Silicon Valley) reacted strongly to the word "Lisp" (it apparently > brought back old memories of their AI class in college) and are not > "convinced enough" about Clojure. > > I tried explaining that Clojure runs on the JVM and thus won't have > any > problem with libs or integrating with existing Java apps but they are > not happy. > > Their concerns are thus: > > 1. How do you get Clojure programmers? Lisp is not for the faint > hearted. > > 2. What about the performance of Clojure? Is it fast? > > 3. People who want to use this are more academically inclined and are > not practical. This will make the whole project fail. > > I need some pointers on this. This is a really crucial thing for me > and > any help will be appreciated. > > Regards, > BG > > -- > Baishampayan Ghose <b.gh...@ocricket.com> > oCricket.com > — Daniel Lyons --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
