- What is he using now? (Python?)
- Is there a LISP dialect that doesn't suffer from this problem? I can see that from time to time LISP projects start taking off just do die a year later and I'm stuck using Emacs (Lighttable comes into mind)
From the blog:
>> I’ve been writing a great deal of Python, Bash, Awk, Perl 5 for my own consumption
[1]: https://til.andrew-quinn.me/posts/what-programming-languages...
The old linked thread had some prominent figure saying “but just do <inconvenient thing>” in response to every issue, if the language isn’t growing, only people accustomed to the inconveniences stick around.
So, I’d say it used to be Clojure, but now I doubt there is one.
I am not sure what problem you are referring to. Racket has been actively developed since the mid-90s.
Could it be that some languages, through the target audience they attract, seal their disastrous fate? By that I mean languages that attract nerds like me or peculiar math-oriented minds who can nit pick at every single detail.
You wouldn't expect this much nit from a mass-scale enterprise language like Java.
I'd be surprised if some of the Java developers wouldn't be assholes or weird, just statistically. The difference there is that you don't interact with the individual developers. Oracle handle all of that internally.
"In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake."
Big projects have big problems to deal with. On small projects with no such distractions, the influence of personalities is relatively larger.
And Python doesn't have drama. Since when?
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240110183908/https://blog.winn...
I wouldn't call Racket a 'tiny niche' language--its influence is much greater. It is a direct modern descendent of Lisp-1 languages.
I used it to do SiCP and learned a lot about what a language or program can do (as I imagine many others have as well).
What drama are you referring to? The post is a pretty breezy explanation of how he handed off some old projects.
* Over the years, the academic priorities and investment of Racket have been its greatest strength, but also sometimes a weakness.
* Yes, getting good at Scheme or Racket and/or Common Lisp will make you a better programmer, but a less employable one. Keep it secret, not on your resume. (Though, if you write blog posts to promote your personal brand, you can do a rare post on Lisps, with a carefully-tuned level of casual curiosity, so that readers think you are a smart and savvy brogrammer, but not an actual nerd. Be sure dilute the Lisp on your blog, with some currently popular other keywords, to signal in a way recognizable to bros that you are gettin' it done, in a bro fist-bumping way, with your stacks and workflows and sprints and standups and OKRs and KPIs and RSUs.)
dang•5mo ago
Racket frustrates me - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36541758 - June 2023 (127 comments)