Steam Lisp

by fogus • 15 years ago

78 15 15 years ago

oconnore• 15 years ago

All innovators are unconventional.

That is a conditional statement, not a biconditional. Which is why for every single successful innovator, we can often find thousands of nutcases, inventing floating shoes, helmet mounted rifles, and Forth (just kidding, mostly). Therefore, an unconventional person should be especially careful that they do not find themselves on the wrong side of the thin line between genius and insanity.

warrenwilkinson• 15 years ago

Forth is number 1 on my list of greatest languages -- and I've been coding Lisp full time for years. If you want to have your mind blown, take a look at what Moore has done recently with Color Forth. It's tricky to piece together the story from bits on the internet, but the resulting language is enlightened in a way no other languages can claim.

GregBuchholz• 15 years ago

This ties in well with ( http://www.yosefk.com/blog/my-history-with-forth-stack-machi... )

"What can be said of this? If, in order to 'really' enter a programming culture, I need to both 'be solving a significant real problem in the real world' and exercising 'the freedom to change the language, the compiler, the OS or even the hardware design', then there are very few options for entering this culture indeed. The requirement for 'real world work' is almost by definition incompatible with 'the freedom to change the language, the compiler, the OS and the hardware design'."

ohyes• 15 years ago

It is also a tautology.

RickHull• 15 years ago

> All innovators are unconventional.

The real problem is that it's hard to distinguish "best" practices from conventional practices. Innovators are necessarily unconventional, but the ones we care about are also necessarily demonstrably good (in some sense). So there is this claim from the innovator side that "unconventional" is not a valid argument.

This claim only makes sense in the presence of an "unconventional" judgment -- i.e. that this creative work is necessarily deficient simply because it is unconventional.

Now, of course, no critic would put it so bluntly. But I think it illustrates the underlying dynamic.

cafard• 15 years ago

Particularly in blogging, hot air makes the world go around...

sukuriant• 15 years ago

You mean steam

stephenjudkins• 15 years ago

From reading the author's other posts, the clear implication is that Lisp (and only the author's preferred flavors of Lisp, not pale imitations like Clojure) offers the only possibility of breaking out of the hopelessly broken paradigms accepted by the unwashed masses.

Personally, for all the problems and terrible design decisions that we're all living with, I find a whole lot of what fellow programmers do amazing and inspirational. A lot of the stuff they produce with so-called broken and unproductive tools are amazing products that provide a lot of productivity and enjoyment for a wide range of people. I've also found that almost any sufficiently popular language or environment has its share of brilliant, original thinkers trying to build new tools to make things easier and better for others. These are people who should be thanked and celebrated for their contributions.

I looked further into the author's blog posts. The dominant themes are bilious and scornful attacks on other's work, or lamentations about the sad state of software today. He claims to be producing a Lisp-based operating system. Curious to see his progress, I checked the source repository, to find that it only contains a README indignantly protesting the the treatment he's received from others.

This guy's combination of arrogance, scorn, and complete lack of demonstrated competence makes him oddly fascinating. I wonder what kind of social factors in our industry produce people like this, and how we can work to counteract them.

jseliger• 15 years ago

The dominant themes are bilious and scornful attacks on other's work, or lamentations about the sad state of software today. He claims to be producing a Lisp-based operating system. Curious to see his progress, I checked the source repository, to find that it only contains a README indignantly protesting the the treatment he's received from others.

Funny -- I wrote something more polite but similar to this in 2010 about another post of his: http://jseliger.com/2010/09/30/computers-and-network-effects... .

praptak• 15 years ago

Yeah, another post praising the greatness of Lisp without any backup in actual evidence. Dude, you'd be infinitely more convincing having actually produced something great with Lisp or at least showing how its unique features can be used for this purpose. "Lisp is great, but the masses just don't get it" doesn't cut it.

vixen99• 15 years ago

I missed the "Lisp is great, but the masses just don't get it" bit so thanks for the interpretation. Isn't a short blog comment (take it or leave it) enough for you? The author's got to produce a thesis with full supporting documentation on a point you suppose he's making? This is straw dog stuff. I wonder why it gets you hot under the collar?

asciilifeform• 15 years ago

Out of curiosity, what kind of evidence would you accept?

The concept of the personal GUI workstation, the object-oriented database, and many other things you take for granted were introduced on Lisp Machines. Does this fact convince you of anything?

benreesman• 15 years ago

cranky, pissed off, lisp, hacker. right or wrong, cool.

Luyt• 15 years ago

A video of a replica of a Newcomen steam engine, together with the braindead, repetitive job of the operator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyLXEK5YwUY

Imagine doing that all day long, every day.

And here's a version which has been automated with some strings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca0Ea_oPto8 and apparently got its inventor immediately fired.

Steam Lisp

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