Being primarily a microsoft developer, I'm probably in the minority here. My coworker and I have been talking about branching out and learning completely different languages to stay fresh and learn some different views.
It took me 3 read throughs of this article to begin to get a sense of what makes people rave about LISP. I've also read Chapter 2 of PG's book. From what I can see, I like.
I'm not saying I'm a convert (yet!) but I absolutely plan on reading Paul's book and working through the examples and excercises there.
In the meantime, is the article a good way to think about Lisp?
The article is too long and not that well written. The biggest problem is that, however good the writer they are never going to be able to communicate the power of lisp in prose. It's upto the audience to see it. For those who know lisp, they already know. For those who don't it's like coming in contact with something alien and you can't tell if it solves any problem at all. It's almost as if ones' come in contact with a cult.
Though lisp provides a lot of syntactic flexibility. The beauty of lisp is in giving the programmer confidence that you can create a prototype extremely quickly and then optimize it when needed.
I find the hardest thing in the world is getting started. Once I start its never as hard as I thought it was going to be. In a nutshell, Lisp helps me get started and then lets me get the code ready for prime time.
If you are a web developer, I'd say spend a weekend trying out UCW, write a reddit clone in it. Then try to write it in python. It'll be obvious what lisp has to offer.
I'd start by reading SICP by Sussman and Abelson. Their lectures are available in video. I had a profound experience at the end of lecture 2b where they explain how car, cdr and cons are defined, thus explaining that in lisp, code is data.
The above comes with a warning... Lisp is truely the red pill. Once you've figured it out, you'll find it physically impossible to code in any other language.
I've never been afraid of the red pill. If it'll improve my ability to be effective, I'll gladly take it. :)
Without knowing much about Lisp, it seems that trying to describe it is like to trying to tell someone about Buddhism, or Jazz. Talking about it is just not the same thing as "getting it".
Thanks for your thoughts vikram, If I do become a convert I'll be sure to make a special post to news.yc :)
If you have Lisp, you don't need the plethora of XML mini-languages you need in Java and many other languages. You can just keep everything Lisp, and give up nothing in flexibility and still succintly express ideas in your problem domain.
This is what is often referred to as "Domain Specific Languages". With Lisp, you can create a DSL and its still Lisp.
That is what the article is saying, but much more verbosely. In the article's defense, I think it takes something as long as that for people who don't know Lisp to really understand the point.
It took me 3 read throughs of this article to begin to get a sense of what makes people rave about LISP. I've also read Chapter 2 of PG's book. From what I can see, I like.
I'm not saying I'm a convert (yet!) but I absolutely plan on reading Paul's book and working through the examples and excercises there.
In the meantime, is the article a good way to think about Lisp?