My only regret with programming was not finding lisp until my late 20's. I remember having only 1 day of a class in college that went over lisp. It was a crappy copy of McCarthy's lisp paper, so of course the impression that an immature 20 year old took was, 'that was history; so interesting but not relevant to my (c++ ) world.' I think that the oil-changers metaphor has some truth to it. I wanted to build spaceships before I knew about "cars". But from where I sat, that was just the only way I could figure on getting there. What would be different if I had understood lisp before I got on to the notion of oil-changes as a means to an end?
I think that there is a subset of oil-changers that will always come to lisp. There is a subset that come to lisp only when they are randomly adopted by a space engineer. There is a subset that will always change oil. Not to dehumanize people by comparing them to dogs, but with dogs, if you get to training them within about the first 1-1/2 years of age, their temperament, within limits, can be molded. After that, you can still train them tricks and commands, but their temperament becomes set. Is their a subset of "future oil-changers" that may be adoptable up until a certain age but not after they eat semi-colon kibble for too long? How big of a subset could that be? I think they are the ones who most need evangelized and are hardest to capture. -Curt On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 5:50 PM, Neil Van Dyke <n...@neilvandyke.org> wrote: > This is the weekend, and I'm off the clock. > > I think there is a balance to be achieved in advocacy/evanglism, but I get > tired of it, especially when it gets one hung up arguing minutiae that > people found boring years ago. > > Are we really arguing about slowness, WITH JAVA PROGRAMMERS? (Do they not > know their own people's recent history? Next, will we have client-side Web > programmers trying to school everyone about computational efficiency?) And > do we really have to talk about parentheses? (Didn't the respectability of > languages like Python get us past the everything-has-to-look-like-C/Java, > quite some years ago?) And who still thinks that Lisp is about AI. > (Hint: AI changed decades ago, and some Lisp descendants have changed a lot > since then, too.) > > This is the 21st century, and the smart programmers tend to be conversant > on topics in software development outside the thinking of corporate > open-plan office workpods. I wouldn't want to disturb the workpods that > don't want to be distracted from their policies and procedures. I'd rather > spend my time talking with people who are interested in domain-specific > languages, multi-paradigm programming, algorithms, software engineering > process (as opposed to cargo cults), and the various innovations that come > when people learn lots of things and think about and beyond that. > > A story... > > The bulk of the software programming world is automobile technicians who > just change oil all day. > > Many of them get really good at changing the oil, and maybe making modest > repairs to particular series of cars. > > A handful of those people will look beyond that, and become master > mechanics, but most won't get experience or be able to see beyond oil > changes and other rote procedures. > > Then there are the people who always wanted to design cars or spaceships. > They learn how to change oil and do repairs early on, but they also go off > and learn a lot more, and possibly end up working for Lamborghini or Tesla > or their own company. > > These Tesla engineers then reach out to promising young oil-changers they > see, saying unto them, "Come, hit the books, and join us in searching for > better ways of doing things." > > But the oil-changers cry out, "Get real, spaceman. I can't even find the > oil on your toy car. And what the hell kind of bolt head is that? Don't > you know how the real world works? Now leave me alone; I've got oil to > change." > > The Tesla engineers weep for the oil-changers. Then cheer up themselves > by checking their stock options. > > Maybe the Tesla engineers should let the children who want to design cars > and spaceships come to them. > > Neil V. > > ____________________ > Racket Users list: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/users >
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