Is LISP the holy grail?
The article "Beating the Averages" written by Paul Graham (2001) describes how the use of an uncommon programming language (LISP) can be used as an advantage. In the opinion of Graham LISP is the best programming language for a startup so far.
I understand the advantages of the language and the advantage to react fast against competitors. If you do different than your competitors and observe them closely you can get a head start in different areas.
But in my opinion this article is quite one-sided. You often only hear about companies which succeeded. It would be interesting to know if other companies (in other working areas) also succeeded like Graham´s company. Sometimes it looks like Graham is choosing personal experience over solid data (which might be the right choice). In the end ViaWeb, Graham´s company, was bought by Yahoo.
He also compares programming languages to be half religion. I do agree with this opinion because users of a specific language can be often passionate and fanatic about this language. Keeping this in mind the praise for LISP must be considered critically.
Since the article is very old (2001), it would be interesting to read a statement of Graham on the current state of view. Also, the history showed us that Yahoo stepped more and more in the background behind Google. It also seems that since the article was published 16 years ago LISP hasn´t spread that much around the world except some fields of use.
Close before the end, I must admit before starting the class I never had heard about LISP or Clojure. For this reason, I can confirm, that this language really isn´t the common used language. I´m glad that I (hopefully) will learn it (and maybe also will get some advantage in the market).
Last but not least, I do not think that LISP will be the "one" programming language... but proove me wrong!
References:
Graham, P. (2001). Beating the Average.
Retrieved from: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
The article "Beating the Averages" written by Paul Graham (2001) describes how the use of an uncommon programming language (LISP) can be used as an advantage. In the opinion of Graham LISP is the best programming language for a startup so far.
I understand the advantages of the language and the advantage to react fast against competitors. If you do different than your competitors and observe them closely you can get a head start in different areas.
But in my opinion this article is quite one-sided. You often only hear about companies which succeeded. It would be interesting to know if other companies (in other working areas) also succeeded like Graham´s company. Sometimes it looks like Graham is choosing personal experience over solid data (which might be the right choice). In the end ViaWeb, Graham´s company, was bought by Yahoo.
He also compares programming languages to be half religion. I do agree with this opinion because users of a specific language can be often passionate and fanatic about this language. Keeping this in mind the praise for LISP must be considered critically.
Since the article is very old (2001), it would be interesting to read a statement of Graham on the current state of view. Also, the history showed us that Yahoo stepped more and more in the background behind Google. It also seems that since the article was published 16 years ago LISP hasn´t spread that much around the world except some fields of use.
Close before the end, I must admit before starting the class I never had heard about LISP or Clojure. For this reason, I can confirm, that this language really isn´t the common used language. I´m glad that I (hopefully) will learn it (and maybe also will get some advantage in the market).
Last but not least, I do not think that LISP will be the "one" programming language... but proove me wrong!
References:
Graham, P. (2001). Beating the Average.
Retrieved from: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
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