I’m not going to try to sell you on Lisp. It can’t be done. You have to find it yourself, and when you do, many of your friends will become rather… distant, as if you’d inexplicably stopped bathing.
From Steve Yegge on Tin Foil Hats and Rubber Ducks. Read the follow-up, Duck Season, too.
I’ve found Ruby. Is it Lisp enough? I know it is for me. At least for the moment.
Nope – not even close. Ruby is cool right now. Most people doing web based stuff at least heard about Ruby or Rails. And mostly, it’s good things that are being said about it around the water coolers around the world. Most people I talked to said they would like to check it out, and most of those who did generally liked it.
And of course Ruby is object oriented, and has a very traditional syntax and control structures making it relatively easy to pick up.
Lisp on the other hand makes most developers run for the hills. It is a functional language, has distinct syntax that is very different from C, it highly favors recursion over iteration, and forces you to think in a very different way.
It is a great language, and very powerful but you probably won’t find web developers shooting shit about it over their lunch break. You are more likely to find it in Academia, or in R&D shops manned by PHD’s than in your run of the mill web application sweatshop.
I think Ruby skills are probably more marketable right now because of all the hype surrounding the language.
I like them both. I absolutely loved working with Lisp in school, and I think it was a great experience. But I haven’t really used it for anything since then. I would essentially always go to Java or PHP for my projects because it seemed more practical. I guess it might be because most of my projects as of late were relatively simple “design DB”, “design web based DB UI for I/O”, “run reports”, “make sure someone can read your code” deals. ;)
Right now I’m messing around with Ruby on Rails and I’m totally falling in love with it. And I can already see couple of projects that I would want to use it for. So I guess that’s the difference.
Yeah, I love both Ruby and Rails. I suppose I’ll have a stab at Lisp at some point, now that I read Steve Yegge so much.
Now as for something different, I’ve done some Prolog during my CS studies. That required complete out-of-the-box thinking, so I think I have a head-start on Lisp :)
Steve Yegge rules. He is currently blogging here. :)
I did a little bit of Prolog in my Programing Languages class. Not enough to really get a feel for the language though.
Oh I know his current blog very well, I’m just backlogging through his old posts :)
The most interesting part of “Happy Feet” was the subtitle dancing scene. And that would be about it. Perhaps two more interesting scenes in the movie. I don’t remember bothering to write about it. Did I? But “Cars” – I was bored watching trailer. And “Monster House” – c’mon. So the choice was obvious. The nominations were just weak.
There should be an option to comment on your short film reviews.
Yea, I know. There will be. Someday…
I hope that sooner than later ;-)
Ah no, LISP, it is kind of mad. So different from RoR. I had to do a couple of courses in it at Uni and it was definitely a pretty alien experience, and you have to think in an entirely different, cursive way.
You’ve got to be kidding me – Smoking… so poor. That’s a pity. And I don’t know why would I trust your judgement… But I was hoping for a rather nice and entertaining piece of filmmaking.
You watch far too many good films! :-)
Argentina, Argentina, Argentinian Cinematography! Vive L’Argentine.
In other words: cute, you could just, if you… Well. I envy, a bit :-)
>Mind note: no more English movies for me.
ugh html :/
Okey. once again:
1. It’s just a matter of choice
2. I can bet you won’t stand by this. Not for long.
3. Wanna go for French?