Re: Is Lisp a Blub?
- From: Pascal Costanza <pc@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2007 16:27:35 +0200
Don Geddis wrote:
Some thoughts spurred -- I am ashamed to admit -- by our local spammer JH.
Probably most of us are familiar with Paul Graham's hypothetical "Blub"
language, as described in the section "The Blub Paradox" in the middle of
http://paulgraham.com/avg.html
It was a hypothetical example to show how some programmers, only used to
languages less powerful than Lisp, might not appreciate the power of Lisp,
simply because they don't understand those features of Lisp that their own
favorite language lacks.
This is one of Paul Graham's worst text fragments, IMHO (the rest of "Beating the Averages is quite good, though). You can only relate to it when you think that you're "up in the power continuum." However, you may simply not know that others are even "higher" in the "power continuum." There are essentially two possibilities: Either another language is worse than the one you prefer, or you simply don't understand it, in which case it simply _appears_ to be worse to you. This effectively means that, if you think that another language is worse than the one you prefer, you simply cannot draw any conclusions. [This is an exaggeration, of course, things are different if you know the involved languages very closely.]
Bjarne Stroustrup's remarks about language comparisons apply here:
"I also worry about a phenomenon I have repeatedly observed in honest attempts at language comparisons. The authors try hard to be impartial, but are hopelessly biased by focusing on a single application, a single style of programming, or a single culture among programmers. Worse, when one language is significantly better known than others, a subtle shift in perspective occurs: Flaws in the well-known language are deemed minor and simple workarounds are presented, whereas similar flaws in other languages are deemed fundamental. Often, the workarounds commonly used in the less-well-known languages are simply unknown to the people doing the comparison or deemed unsatisfactory because they would be unworkable in the more familiar language."
See http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq.html#compare
In contrast, I find Paul Graham's ideas about "Blub" counter-enlightening.
Also: There is nothing special about being "up in the power continuum." Just because most languages suck nowadays doesn't mean that you're special because you happen to know a language that doesn't suck that much. The ideas behind Lisp are only mind blowing when compared to more mainstream languages. In 200 years from now, though, these ideas will be regarded as trivial.
Pascal
--
My website: http://p-cos.net
Common Lisp Document Repository: http://cdr.eurolisp.org
Closer to MOP & ContextL: http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/
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