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What is it about Lisp that makes it the subject of so many blog posts by people who almost certainly don't use it on a day to day basis? Is it some sort of insecurity about their current environment? Is it just a go to topic when you can't think of anything better? Why don't Haskell and Erlang attract the same attention, though both make big claims too (e.g. the type system makes programs correct, the actor model solves concurrency...)
Lisp has some unique features. Some people like them, and feel more productive using them. Other people don't, and prefer other languages. Can we move on now?
I think that "insecurity about their current environment" is spot on. Or at least this has been my experience. Lisp is hailed as something close to perfection gurus (like Paul Graham, etc) use. Before I discovered Python I was drawn back to Lisp once a year on average, only to find out again that it's not quite there for real-life use. Luckily, with Python I defeated the insecurity in my tools and could happily move on.
Lisp has had some extremely vocal advocates. Paul Graham, certainly. "Beating the Averages" has attracted a lot of attention, outside its typical niches.
Also, Lisp has been around for a while - it's been a couple decades ahead of its time for fifty years! Much great research literature has come out of its culture.
Besides, Haskell certainly gets plenty of "blog posts by people who almost certainly don't use it on a day to day basis". Erlang's culture seems to favor ugly pragmatism over "avoiding success at all costs", though.
Have you noticed how many articles are about C around here? As I said in another thread, there's too many benefits to discussing C/Lisp/Git: strong opinions (thus, traffic), karma, and illusory in-group status.
If we want to fix Hacker News, we need a way to stop these sorts of karmic feedback loops from setting themselves up, because they are echo chambers.
(Also, it'd be nice if bloggers didn't measure post success by traffic, but we all know that isn't going to change.)
How would you prefer bloggers to measure success? I assume that most writers would measure success in readership, influence, or money. Traffic seems pretty close to readership. Influence is harder to measure, but generally the more readers, the more influence. And money from a website is generally proportional to traffic.
Well, I'd wish they'd measure it by the quality of their writing and the discussion it generates instead of hits. But it's up to them how to measure success.
I'm only concerned with how that perception of success affects HN. Presently, it's too easy for bloggers to choose to discuss A Most Excellent Technology in the hopes of making the front page. The actual writing may not make any points beyond, "vim changed my life!" but, still, it's put on the front page by the bikeshedding committee, thus perpetuating the feedback loop. You may argue that certain tools have a favored status within certain groups, and that is fine -- I'd prefer if people were picky about their tools. But the standard must be raised on bikeshedding articles beyond mere sentiments of "I like this technology." There needs to be an intellectual gain made from the blog post, not simply an opinion being expressed.
Otherwise, HN risks becoming like every other social news site, where people upvote the articles they want to see to the point of creating more noise than signal. We are still have quite a ways to go before we're there, but the recurrence of topics is a bit troubling.
That's a fairly pessimistic view of "most writers." I would hope that most authors would pick topics based on their own intellectual curiosity, and enjoy readership/influence/money as a secondary benefit of their work. But perhaps I am being unrealistic?
That was my question as well. It's pretty clear from searching lisp on this guy's blog and looking at his resume and list of software projects that he has actually never used lisp.
Lisp has some unique features. Some people like them, and feel more productive using them. Other people don't, and prefer other languages. Can we move on now?