Re: Joel hammers the final nail into Lisp's coffin

John Thingstad wrote:
In general it is a bad idea to write a large app without having at least
one
programmer with extensive experience in the language.
Say he has been using it for a couple of years and written 20 smaller
programs
and 30 000 lines of code. That's a pretty minimal figure and the numbers
are
somewhat arbitrary, but you get the picture.
If you have been writing applications in Java for 10 years and just learned
Lisp you are probably better off sticking with Java.
I haven't studied the 'redit incident' in detail but it was my
impression that the lack of success was due to inexperience and
that they went back to Python because it was more familiar.

I rarely post here, so forgive any breaches of etiquette... ;)

I think this is an important point. I regularly read Joel's postings
and usually find them interesting, but it seems like a point is being
overlooked here by several of the replies. I've seen more than a few
articles/papers/postings/etc about web applications being developed in
"non-traditional" languages, and I've also read Paul Graham's writings
on ViaWeb.

I can't say there have been zero successes with Lisp (Naughty Dog,
Orbitz, the original ViaWeb are examples of successes), but the problem
with picking a language like Lisp, OCaml or Smalltalk is simple: you
might be the guru who implements the original system, but the company
might be in a heap of trouble if you leave and they try to find someone
as good as you are.

People pick Java or .NET not because they are better or worse than Lisp
or Smalltalk, but because they are familiar with it and can find
resources for the project. Unfortunately, it seems to be easier to
find Java or .NET developers for most projects. I've had similar
problems with my company... I'd love to develop some wonderful web
applications using something other than Java, but the response I
usually get is "that's great, but that means you are the only person
that can do anything with this code". I also had a very good coworker
who loved developing applications in Erlang, OCaml and Haskell, but he
had a hell of a time convincing people to let him use these languages,
and only succeeded in getting OCaml used on one small system. Of
course, he eventually left the company and everyone's hoping this
application never breaks. :)

Just my two cents...

Mark

.

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