So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
of this post is taken from the title of his review. His criticism
centers on this question:
If Lisp is so powerful, why then has it consistently failed to hit
the big time?
and the failure of _Practical Common Lisp_ to answer it. Later he
says:
The book does not make a convincing case as to why CL should succeed
now, against those formidable and entrenched opponents [such as
Java, C#, and VB].
Luckily there have been enough 5-star reviews (thanks!) that his
3-star review doesn't actually change the average (after rounding).
But his review is the most recent review which means it's the first
review anyone will see. So if you've been meaning to write a positive
review for Amazon, now would be an excellent time to post it, to push
old Wes down the page a bit. Or if you've been meaning to post a
negative review, now would be an excellent time to pile on and try and
push that rating below five stars.
-Peter
[1] <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590592395/>
--
Peter Seibel ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
That is ridiculous. He doesn't appear to understand that actions speak
louder than words: Practical Common Lisp *shows* you exactly why CL
should succeed now. What else can one ask for?
--
Tron3k
······@gmail.com
On 16 Apr 2005 00:43:35 -0700, ······@gmail.com wrote:
>That is ridiculous. He doesn't appear to understand that actions speak
>louder than words: Practical Common Lisp *shows* you exactly why CL
>should succeed now.
Not for me. Why CL should succeed now and how the book supports this
position?
A.L.
"Tron3k" <······@gmail.com> wrote in news:1113681066.363294.86730
@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> By showing you how it's useful, obviously. What other reason is there
> for a language to succeed?
"Showing that a language is useful" does not mean explaining it to techies.
Techies generally confuse 'neat' with useful. Techies think things are
'neat' if they aggrandize their own expertise and otherwise give them fun
things to think about. If you want to prove utility, it's better to
present a pile of Testimonials to managerial types. An example of this
approach is http://www.franz.com/success/
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Yeah, I could not care less what languages managerial types consider
useful. Reading this book did, however, show me how Lisp can be used in
actual useful code, and therefore, how it is useful. Is that not the
most obvious thing in the world?
--
Tron3k
"Tron3k" <······@gmail.com> wrote in
·····························@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
> Yeah, I could not care less what languages managerial types consider
> useful. Reading this book did, however, show me how Lisp can be used
> in actual useful code, and therefore, how it is useful. Is that not
> the most obvious thing in the world?
So did you use it for something?
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Yeah, I'm using Lisp to write the server for my online RPG game. Lisp
is actually really nice for that sort of thing, because I'm all the
time adding features to the game and Lisp is very flexible. The rapid
prototyping helps like crazy too. Unfortunately I must write the client
in C# because I don't have a commercial license for the Lisp compiler
I'm using.
--
Tron3k
"Tron3k" <······@gmail.com> wrote in
·····························@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
> Yeah, I'm using Lisp to write the server for my online RPG game. Lisp
> is actually really nice for that sort of thing, because I'm all the
> time adding features to the game and Lisp is very flexible. The rapid
> prototyping helps like crazy too. Unfortunately I must write the
> client in C# because I don't have a commercial license for the Lisp
> compiler I'm using.
Why don't you just buy a license? Is it ridiculously expensive? How is
splitting your development languages saving you time? Do you value your
time? Do you value, say, $600 of your time?
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
That's what people have been telling me, man. :-) I know you're right
... But, well, here's my rationale:
1. The main part of this game is the server ... the client is basically
a dumb terminal. So the coding of the client is conceptually very easy,
GUI and graphics stuff (it's just a 2D game, in isometric). Lisp is a
big win when you're doing something hard like writing the server. With
the client I know exactly what I'm doing so the rigidness of lesser
languages isn't too painful. ;)
2. Going to Lisp for graphical stuff is kind of a lose right now. I
know it can be done and I'd like to do it eventually. But, I'm sure you
guys know what I'm talking about here! And, DirectX with .NET is
incredibly simple.
Oh, but how I miss those gratuitous parentheses when I'm not using Lisp
... ;). And the ability to use arbitrary control structures when you're
inside another statement ... the best that C languages have to offer is
the question-mark operator.
I really can't wait for the CMUCL windows port, but seems like it will
take a while...
--
Tron3k
Tron3k schrieb:
> That's what people have been telling me, man. :-) I know you're right
> ... But, well, here's my rationale:
>
> 1. The main part of this game is the server ... the client is basically
> a dumb terminal. So the coding of the client is conceptually very easy,
> GUI and graphics stuff (it's just a 2D game, in isometric). Lisp is a
> big win when you're doing something hard like writing the server. With
> the client I know exactly what I'm doing so the rigidness of lesser
> languages isn't too painful. ;)
> 2. Going to Lisp for graphical stuff is kind of a lose right now. I
> know it can be done and I'd like to do it eventually. But, I'm sure you
> guys know what I'm talking about here! And, DirectX with .NET is
> incredibly simple.
>
> Oh, but how I miss those gratuitous parentheses when I'm not using Lisp
> ... ;). And the ability to use arbitrary control structures when you're
> inside another statement ... the best that C languages have to offer is
> the question-mark operator.
>
> I really can't wait for the CMUCL windows port, but seems like it will
> take a while...
If the game is going to be freeware then you could consider using Corman
Lisp. While the IDE is not free, the Lisp-Compiler and image are free
for non-commercial use. As I understood it you can access all Windows
functions easily with Corman Lisp. So Direct X should be at your hands.
At least you could try it out for one day.
This way I could try your game too (.NET free computer here ;-)). Also a
cool thing is that all people who play the game would know (if you let
them know) that you have a game which is 100% Lisp code.
Andr�
--
"Tron3k" <······@gmail.com> wrote in
·····························@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
> That's what people have been telling me, man. :-) I know you're right
> ... But, well, here's my rationale:
>
> 1. The main part of this game is the server ... the client is
> basically a dumb terminal. So the coding of the client is conceptually
> very easy, GUI and graphics stuff (it's just a 2D game, in isometric).
> Lisp is a big win when you're doing something hard like writing the
> server. With the client I know exactly what I'm doing so the rigidness
> of lesser languages isn't too painful. ;)
What about as you try to share and refactor code between advanced
servers and advanced clients? It doesn't seem at all wise to assume
that the client is going to "remain dumb."
> 2. Going to Lisp for graphical stuff is kind of a lose right now. I
> know it can be done and I'd like to do it eventually. But, I'm sure
> you guys know what I'm talking about here! And, DirectX with .NET is
> incredibly simple.
DirectX is the wrong level of problem abstraction for a 3D game client,
however. You need a 3D engine, not a low level rendering library.
Maybe you figure that's what you're knocking up in C#. Maybe you think
in the long term, that's easy. But I personally don't like the idea of
having to do scene graph traversal and modeling calculations from C#.
It is not a powerful language for that sort of thing. If you do end up
tacking on Lisp someday, you're going to end up mirroring all those C#
data structures you built. Although that's more rational than mirroring
C++ data structures, it's still not what I'd call a great system.
But by all means, do what it takes to ship the initial releases. I
would just suggest that at some point, your server is going to become
more advanced and your client is going to want / need to reflect that
somehow. C# will eventually prove a PITA, even if it is not now.
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"We live in a world of very bright people building
crappy software with total shit for tools and process."
- Ed McKenzie
Tron3k schrieb:
> Yeah, I'm using Lisp to write the server for my online RPG game. Lisp
> is actually really nice for that sort of thing, because I'm all the
> time adding features to the game and Lisp is very flexible. The rapid
> prototyping helps like crazy too. Unfortunately I must write the client
> in C# because I don't have a commercial license for the Lisp compiler
> I'm using.
It sounds cool what you are doing. Tron3k, I suggest you to write an
email to Lispworks. If you want to make a free game/open source game and
if it is really good and impressive they might give you a license to
publish it. Or you could ask here in the newsgroup if someone compiles
the source code for you into an exe file.
Andr�
--
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> things to think about. If you want to prove utility, it's better to
> present a pile of Testimonials to managerial types. An example of this
> approach is http://www.franz.com/success/
It doesn't work.
Some time ago, back at the ALU CLiki site, I created these pages and
tried to keep them up to date:
Industry Applications using Lisp
http://lisp.tech.coop/Industry%20Application
Research Organizations
http://lisp.tech.coop/research%20organizations
Resources for those looking to Evaluate Lisp
http://lisp.tech.coop/Evaluate%20Lisp
When people noticed even a single stale link, they said that Lisp had
been abandoned, or that the companies mentioned in the pages no longer
used it. If the links were fine, they said that the number of
companies/organizations using Lisp was negligible anyway.
So, I gave up updating those pages. Now I write Lisp code.
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote in
···················@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it:
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
> writes:
>
>> things to think about. If you want to prove utility, it's better to
>> present a pile of Testimonials to managerial types. An example of
>> this approach is http://www.franz.com/success/
>
> It doesn't work.
>
> Some time ago, back at the ALU CLiki site, I created these pages and
> tried to keep them up to date: [...]
>
> When people noticed even a single stale link, they said that Lisp had
> been abandoned, or that the companies mentioned in the pages no longer
> used it. If the links were fine, they said that the number of
> companies/organizations using Lisp was negligible anyway.
>
> So, I gave up updating those pages. Now I write Lisp code.
This sounds like China giving up on maritime exploration, or clocks.
The Emperor says such-and-such, and progress halts along a given axis.
Why? Because the Empreror had a personality quirk about whether things
were "worth it" or not. Compare Europe, which was never centralized,
and had lotsa competing monarchs to try stuff out. Doesn't matter if
the first 5 monarchs think something doesn't work. The 6th monarch
makes it work to gain a competitive advantage.
I am saying, if this project was your sole province, then that is not
enough industrial effort to make it work. You need a whole bunch of
people keeping links alive and actively promoting new material. The
Python community has done this sort of thing, via the Success Stories.
http://www.pythonology.com/success . Now, granted, Python marketing
efforts leave a lot to be desired, but the community has made them. I
don't think interest in that sort of thing ever wholly dies with them,
but of course they could benefit from more energy expended on the
marketing problems.
Actually, I lost faith in them because Guido's in charge. It's exactly
the Emperor problem again. The Emperor blocks progress, on his personal
whim. Progress halts.
Your business critics are "sorta correct" when they look at Lisp success
stories and say things like "Lisp is dead, there's not enough Lisp."
It's not a fair comment at a personal level, to the maintainer of a
marketing website, but at a business level the lack of apparent volume,
robustness, and maintenance of a marketing website does say something
about the scale of Lisp. Businesses are interested in industrial-grade
activity, usually. Unless they're a particularly brainy business that
doesn't need a lot of preaching to, to adopt something like Lisp.
So the conundrum, as always, is that in open source land nobody's
getting paid. So where's all the marketing energy gonna come from? A
chicken-and-egg problem. At least Lisp doesn't have an Emperor though.
Franz has a decent page, but it could use some improvements in the
presentation dept. http://www.franz.com/success/ In particular, I
think having a menu sidebar for the stories is a huge mistake. It's
easy for people to just "tune out" anything on a sidebar. Also, the
stories aren't being framed with proper eye candy. It just doesn't look
like "a lot of success stories." It looks instead like Franz is an
engineering company that has rather perfunctorily put some things on a
website, with some nods to production values as far as navigational bars
go, but no more.
Techies may object that the tone and style of presentation shouldn't
matter. Indeed, the eyesore known as http://www.python.org is the arch
objection. But when you want to move suits, you pay attention to tone
and style.
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
When no one else sells courage, supply and demand take hold.
On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 18:47:29 GMT, "Brandon J. Van Every"
<·····················@mycompanyname.com> wrote:
>Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote in
>···················@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it:
>
>> Some time ago, back at the ALU CLiki site, I created these pages and
>> tried to keep them up to date: [...]
>Your business critics are "sorta correct" when they look at Lisp success
>stories and say things like "Lisp is dead, there's not enough Lisp."
>It's not a fair comment at a personal level, to the maintainer of a
>marketing website, but at a business level the lack of apparent volume,
>robustness, and maintenance of a marketing website does say something
>about the scale of Lisp. Businesses are interested in industrial-grade
>activity, usually. Unless they're a particularly brainy business that
>doesn't need a lot of preaching to, to adopt something like Lisp.
As someone looking at the problem of evangelizing Lisp from within an
organization, I think this is the wrong tactic to take with Lisp. No
one cares whether there are a few companies here or there using Lisp
-- so what? That's an appeal to popularity (let's do what others do),
and Lisp cannot win such a battle.
Eventually one needs to reassure managers that adopting Lisp is not a
ridiculous risk, and the case studies may be useful there. But that is
a second-order problem. The first-order problem is convincing
management that there is a compelling advantage to adopting Lisp.
What Lisp needs are a few compelling talking points that appeal widely
across organizations; claims that are powerful and easily
demonstrated. The real question is whether this can be done. If it
can, I think blogging/newsgroups/articles have a fighting chance of
getting the message out. But right now, the message is more like "if
you are really smart, Lisp lets you build powerful abstractions that
might get your work done quicker/better." This is not a message that
will appeal to managers. They will naturally ask, "what do I do when
boy wonder leaves?" Startups may be comfortable with this model, but
most organizations will not be.
Perl had this. Despite having an awful syntax (load up the shotgun
with punctuation and have at it!), Perl is a powerful language that at
one time had unmatched regular expression support -- for text
processing, it was hard to beat, and this was easy to demonstrate.
Moreover, it can be used successfully by very average programmers.
Java had this. It ran in web browsers, which seemed a towering
advantage at the time.
Much as I like Lisp, its advantages seem complex to explain and
therefore unlikely to attract attention. I'm hoping others in this
newsgroup, who understand it better, can think of a way to explain
Lisp's benefits in a more effective way...
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
Adam Connor wrote:
> As someone looking at the problem of evangelizing Lisp from within an
> organization, I think this is the wrong tactic to take with Lisp. No
> one cares whether there are a few companies here or there using Lisp
> -- so what? That's an appeal to popularity (let's do what others do),
> and Lisp cannot win such a battle.
And why should it? Yes, we'd all like it, but still: I almost
prefer if the mob out there loves Java and leaves me alone.
> Eventually one needs to reassure managers that adopting Lisp is not a
> ridiculous risk, and the case studies may be useful there. But that is
> a second-order problem. The first-order problem is convincing
> management that there is a compelling advantage to adopting Lisp.
But why? We live in a free world. Anyone can program Lisp and
deliver a great product if he wants to. If management doesn't
want Lisp and instead prefers to deliver a slow, ugly program in
Java, then they should. Makes competing easier for those who
focus on technology to build above-average programs (instead of
focusing on advertising to tell everyone your Java app roxors).
> What Lisp needs are a few compelling talking points that appeal widely
> across organizations; claims that are powerful and easily
> demonstrated.
It's called developing apps in Lisp. People use C++ mainly
because everyone else does. Nobody wants to explore unknown
terrain, if they aren't adventurous.
> The real question is whether this can be done. If it
> can, I think blogging/newsgroups/articles have a fighting chance of
> getting the message out. But right now, the message is more like "if
> you are really smart, Lisp lets you build powerful abstractions that
> might get your work done quicker/better." This is not a message that
> will appeal to managers. They will naturally ask, "what do I do when
> boy wonder leaves?" Startups may be comfortable with this model, but
> most organizations will not be.
If the company can't train *everybody* to program in ANSI CL, then
indeed they shouldn't use it. You don't need a wonder boy to
write Lisp, though.
> Perl had this. Despite having an awful syntax (load up the shotgun
> with punctuation and have at it!), Perl is a powerful language that at
> one time had unmatched regular expression support -- for text
> processing, it was hard to beat, and this was easy to demonstrate.
> Moreover, it can be used successfully by very average programmers.
People wrote web apps in Perl that couldn't be written as nicely
with C or whatever they used before for CGI. People saw that and
started adopting Perl. Same with Perl scripts for system tasks.
> Java had this. It ran in web browsers, which seemed a towering
> advantage at the time.
Most Java today is probably Servlets. They promise THE OO
standard (99% of software engineering reseach and teaching is
Java-oriented), and garbage collection. And you can switch from
SPARC to Intel if you want to.
Big companies are probably focused on large-scale software
engineering, so that counts.
> Much as I like Lisp, its advantages seem complex to explain and
> therefore unlikely to attract attention. I'm hoping others in this
> newsgroup, who understand it better, can think of a way to explain
> Lisp's benefits in a more effective way...
incremental development, no edit-debug cycle, macros, powerful
objects system...
Sounds good to me. I don't think people reject Lisp for its
features, more for the not-being-Java aspect and the parentheses:
manager asks programmers "whaddoya think?" "crazy language, all
those ()s everywhere. nobody reasonable can code in that" "ok we
use Java then".
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote in
····················@individual.net:
> Adam Connor wrote:
>> As someone looking at the problem of evangelizing Lisp from within an
>> organization, I think this is the wrong tactic to take with Lisp. No
>> one cares whether there are a few companies here or there using Lisp
>> -- so what? That's an appeal to popularity (let's do what others do),
>> and Lisp cannot win such a battle.
>
> And why should it? Yes, we'd all like it, but still: I almost
> prefer if the mob out there loves Java and leaves me alone.
This is an introverted attitude that has no place in marketing. The
problem with getting anything done in volunteer techie communities is
that the vast majority of techies are introverts.
Of course, one interim step is to form specialized mailing lists that
are more properly focused on the task of marketing. I've been around
that block in the Python world before. The discouraging thing is that
our group *was* getting somewhere. But then we were blocked by Guido
and the PSF, who have no marketing vision. The Emperor problem again.
>> Eventually one needs to reassure managers that adopting Lisp is not a
>> ridiculous risk, and the case studies may be useful there. But that
>> is a second-order problem. The first-order problem is convincing
>> management that there is a compelling advantage to adopting Lisp.
>
> But why? We live in a free world. Anyone can program Lisp and
> deliver a great product if he wants to.
If you do not believe in marketing, it is almost pointless to try to
explain the benefits of marketing to you. The best I can offer as a
short course is to look to Redmond to see what dominates the world.
> If management doesn't
> want Lisp and instead prefers to deliver a slow, ugly program in
> Java, then they should. Makes competing easier for those who
> focus on technology to build above-average programs (instead of
> focusing on advertising to tell everyone your Java app roxors).
Well, the question is whether you personally have solved all your techie
life problems. I, personally, haven't. The game industry is stuck on
C++, and the game industry sucks in zillions of ways that have nothing
to do with choice of language. A big problem in gamedom is the burnout
rates are so high, that nobody with experience really stays in the
industry long enough to move it forwards. Consequently it resembles
China. Things are invented, and forgotten. Europe had a superior
system for institutionalizing knowledge, that's part of why the world
was conquered by whites instead of vice versa.
People who have solved all their own problems, sometimes care about the
general problem, or else are more inclined to pursue their own selfish
interest. I am no exception, my boundaries are just drawn broader. I
am in favor of the MIT / BSD open source model because it allows me to
draw boundaries on how generous I'm going to be. I really would like to
see all the "gruntwork" shared in common. All the boring stuff that
just is a sheer waste of everybody's time. I'm confident in my ability
to compete and add value over and above that. But I do not wish to
share my value adds.
Anyways, caring only about one's own problems is another mark of the
introvert. The extraverts probably already joined companies that shovel
things down other people's throats.
> If the company can't train *everybody* to program in ANSI CL, then
> indeed they shouldn't use it. You don't need a wonder boy to
> write Lisp, though.
I think Eclipse is potentially an excellent platform for training.
> Most Java today is probably Servlets. They promise THE OO
> standard (99% of software engineering reseach and teaching is
> Java-oriented),
It is? Wow, that sounds like an awfully tall claim. But admittedly,
I've been chasing the FP universe for 2 years now, so my world view is
subjective.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> If you do not believe in marketing, it is almost pointless to try to
> explain the benefits of marketing to you. The best I can offer as a
> short course is to look to Redmond to see what dominates the world.
I believe in Marketing. But who do you want to sell Lisp to, and
why would you think they'll pay you for that?
Any programmer can try to convince their boss that Lisp is better
than Java, PHP or whatever. If they don't care, they don't. The
only solution is to code stuff yourself, since there you aren't
dependent on your boss. One thing is the day job, the other your
own life.
If you end up with a product you can either sell that, or open it
up for the public as a great Lisp example.
> Well, the question is whether you personally have solved all your techie
> life problems. I, personally, haven't. The game industry is stuck on
> C++, and the game industry sucks in zillions of ways that have nothing
> to do with choice of language. A big problem in gamedom is the burnout
> rates are so high, that nobody with experience really stays in the
> industry long enough to move it forwards.
That shows that game programming is not a sustainable job as it
is, if the industry is based on exploiting programmers till
they're burnt out. If letting programmers work for just 40h a
week doesn't work for the game industry (too expensive?), then
commercial gamedev as it is isn't economically viable.
I hope that some company will treat their people well, and
therefore end up with the best people and take some market share
from EA and the other big guys... (a bit the Google way)
Especially with mobile gaming gaining importance (and most of them
using crappy slow Java on phones) there seems to be a niche for
indy-game developers to jump in. Competing on the PS2 or the PC
just isn't possible with all the multimedia that has to be created
for that.
So I say, if you think the bosses are exploiting the workers,
gather the workers and create something without the bosses.
> Consequently it resembles
> China. Things are invented, and forgotten. Europe had a superior
> system for institutionalizing knowledge, that's part of why the world
> was conquered by whites instead of vice versa.
Quite true.
> People who have solved all their own problems, sometimes care about the
> general problem, or else are more inclined to pursue their own selfish
> interest. I am no exception, my boundaries are just drawn broader. I
> am in favor of the MIT / BSD open source model because it allows me to
> draw boundaries on how generous I'm going to be. I really would like to
> see all the "gruntwork" shared in common. All the boring stuff that
> just is a sheer waste of everybody's time. I'm confident in my ability
> to compete and add value over and above that. But I do not wish to
> share my value adds.
Isn't Apache licensed like BSD? Apache was a community effort by
several companies who wanted to cut costs by sharing the webserver
development work. Same happens with Linux right now (and IBM
replacing AIX with it).
As people notice that they need to eat, LGPL seems to be replaced
by GPL+commercial license, which isn't too bad, either, as it
creates something like a component marketplace. You can evaluate
the components, then decide build-or-buy.
> Anyways, caring only about one's own problems is another mark of the
> introvert. The extraverts probably already joined companies that shovel
> things down other people's throats.
I don't know. I plan to join a company after graduation, because
it's safe and easier than doing my own thing. I can always do
things beside the job (ok, not too much...).
>>Most Java today is probably Servlets. They promise THE OO
>>standard (99% of software engineering reseach and teaching is
>>Java-oriented),
>
>
> It is? Wow, that sounds like an awfully tall claim. But admittedly,
> I've been chasing the FP universe for 2 years now, so my world view is
> subjective.
Almost every SE paper I've seen seems to use Java as example or
reference, the exception being the PLT Scheme group.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 18:47:39 -0500, Ulrich Hobelmann
<···········@web.de> wrote:
>Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>> If you do not believe in marketing, it is almost pointless to try to
>> explain the benefits of marketing to you. The best I can offer as a
>> short course is to look to Redmond to see what dominates the world.
>
>I believe in Marketing. But who do you want to sell Lisp to, and
>why would you think they'll pay you for that?
>
>Any programmer can try to convince their boss that Lisp is better
>than Java, PHP or whatever. If they don't care, they don't. The
>only solution is to code stuff yourself, since there you aren't
>dependent on your boss. One thing is the day job, the other your
>own life.
Well, actually, there is more to it than that. You need to think about
what your boss values and how you might demonstrate that your solution
honors those values and solves your boss's problems more effectively.
Coding some things in Lisp on the side is OK but is a much less
effective way of spreading Lisp. It also doesn't lead very directly to
more jobs open to Lisp, which is an important consideration for many
of us.
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote:
> As people notice that they need to eat, LGPL seems to be replaced by
> GPL+commercial license, which isn't too bad, either, as it creates
> something like a component marketplace. You can evaluate the
> components, then decide build-or-buy.
Actually, the "GPL+commercial" arrangement _isn't_ so good. It
actually points things back towards the "traditional commercial
license" arrangement because that's what makes the company money.
As soon as the enterprise gets into a situation where bean counters
are in charge, that'll push the GPL version out the door...
The fundamental reason why people were interested in the "free
software" thing in the first place was the absence of licensing fees.
Put license fees back into the equation and it ain't "free" no more...
Someone opened a ticket in the ticketing system at work this week
asking to build a system on which to run MySQL(tm); they were
apparently making the error of thinking they didn't have to buy
licenses to the database software. (They also made the error of
assuming that DBAs would be willing to administer it... We didn't
spend $30K last year paying for apps to be ported _away_ from
MySQL(tm) for that reason...)
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "moc.liamg" ·@" "enworbbc"))
http://linuxdatabases.info/info/spreadsheets.html
"You think you know when you can learn, are more sure when you can
write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can
program." -- Alan Perlis
Christopher Browne <········@acm.org> wrote:
+---------------
| The fundamental reason why people were interested in the "free
| software" thing in the first place was the absence of licensing fees.
| Put license fees back into the equation and it ain't "free" no more...
|
| Someone opened a ticket in the ticketing system at work this week
| asking to build a system on which to run MySQL(tm); they were
| apparently making the error of thinking they didn't have to buy
| licenses to the database software.
+---------------
Which is why I use PostgreSQL. That, and the fact that it's more
stable, robust, etc. ;-}
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
Christopher Browne wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote:
>
>>As people notice that they need to eat, LGPL seems to be replaced by
>>GPL+commercial license, which isn't too bad, either, as it creates
>>something like a component marketplace. You can evaluate the
>>components, then decide build-or-buy.
>
>
> Actually, the "GPL+commercial" arrangement _isn't_ so good. It
> actually points things back towards the "traditional commercial
> license" arrangement because that's what makes the company money.
Exactly is the company's motivation to put significant development
resources behind the product. Trolltech (with the Qt GUI toolkit)
and MySQL AB work like this. Compare this to IBM, who employ
*some* Linux people, whereas Trolltech do most of Qt development,
so that many more programmers get a paid job there. This might
also ensure some level of stability and consistent development,
since the Trolltechers don't just develop in their free time.
> As soon as the enterprise gets into a situation where bean counters
> are in charge, that'll push the GPL version out the door...
The GPL version will always exist. Once you pay for the
commercial license, you also have that source to do whatever you
want (disclaimer: I don't know what exact rights you get along
with a purchase...).
So I don't think there's a significant risk involved in buying
such a license.
The other alternative for a community project is something like
CLisp, CMUCL or Apache, which are products from and for a
community (Apache was founded by several companies), so that the
costs involved for everyone are zero or small (if they employ some
full-time developers, as probably the case for Apache).
> The fundamental reason why people were interested in the "free
> software" thing in the first place was the absence of licensing fees.
> Put license fees back into the equation and it ain't "free" no more...
Of course everybody wants everything for free ;)
Dual license means that it's free to use for free (GPL) projects,
but if you intend to make money with a (closed-source) product
that's based on the company's product (say, Qt) then is it really
unfair to give some of that money back to the company who did the
better part of the development effort, who guided the product's
consistent development?
> Someone opened a ticket in the ticketing system at work this week
> asking to build a system on which to run MySQL(tm); they were
> apparently making the error of thinking they didn't have to buy
> licenses to the database software. (They also made the error of
> assuming that DBAs would be willing to administer it... We didn't
> spend $30K last year paying for apps to be ported _away_ from
> MySQL(tm) for that reason...)
I think they don't, unless they want to sell their software (i.e.
publish it in binary form). I'm not sure if it would even be ok
to build and sell software based on SQL (the standard) and just
install a MySQL with it. I don't know what constitutes "linking"
in this case (as linking is the determining factor behind what
projects are "infected" by the GPL).
But if you want to sell a product, a MySQL license might not be
too expensive. And of course, as Rob said, there's always
PostgreSQL and others.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote in news:3cgaspF6lvgmnU1
>
> I believe in Marketing. But who do you want to sell Lisp to, and
> why would you think they'll pay you for that?
>
> Any programmer can try to convince their boss that Lisp is better
> than Java, PHP or whatever. If they don't care, they don't. The
> only solution is to code stuff yourself, since there you aren't
> dependent on your boss. One thing is the day job, the other your
> own life.
There are of course more nuanced and disciplined approaches to trying to
get Decisionmakers to sign on with something. I think I will let others
comment on the possibilities, as I am going to make a conscious effort to
cut down on posts in the coming week.
Also, I am not currently in the position of wishing to be a Lisp
evangelist. I've been around that block with Python before. I did it
before I even had any expertise in the language. This time, I'm going to
prove that the language works for me first. It may sound crazy that I
was evangelizing something I didn't actually use yet, but consider: I was
trying to find a business model. I wanted to drum up business in the
Seattle region and learn the language all at once. I definitely know
enough about Python to have a sense of its technical merits. For many
problems it's a better option than Java.
> That shows that game programming is not a sustainable job as it
> is, if the industry is based on exploiting programmers till
> they're burnt out. If letting programmers work for just 40h a
> week doesn't work for the game industry (too expensive?), then
> commercial gamedev as it is isn't economically viable.
The game industry is guilty as charged. It would be nice if it imploded,
as I think in crisis there would be more opportunity for guys like me.
But I'm afraid there are too many 20-somethings who are too stupid about
letting people exploit them.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>>That shows that game programming is not a sustainable job as it
>>is, if the industry is based on exploiting programmers till
>>they're burnt out. If letting programmers work for just 40h a
>>week doesn't work for the game industry (too expensive?), then
>>commercial gamedev as it is isn't economically viable.
>
>
> The game industry is guilty as charged. It would be nice if it imploded,
> as I think in crisis there would be more opportunity for guys like me.
> But I'm afraid there are too many 20-somethings who are too stupid about
> letting people exploit them.
If not that, there's always enough cheap developers in developing
countries.
I'm kind of hoping that the internet will decentralize the
worldwide market (or at least allow those who care to have a
subculture of the same), so that aside from the Big Bad Old
Capitalism, there can exist a Small Capitalism for those who care.
Maybe that's just what has already happened and I only need to
find my place in it.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>>That shows that game programming is not a sustainable job as it
>>is, if the industry is based on exploiting programmers till
>>they're burnt out. If letting programmers work for just 40h a
>>week doesn't work for the game industry (too expensive?), then
>>commercial gamedev as it is isn't economically viable.
>
> The game industry is guilty as charged. It would be nice if it imploded,
> as I think in crisis there would be more opportunity for guys like me.
> But I'm afraid there are too many 20-somethings who are too stupid about
> letting people exploit them.
This twenty-something would like to say that most places are not that
bad. At both places that I've worked, it was usual to work about
45hours a week. During the final crunch, that went up to 60 to 70
hours, but the crunch was for less than one tenth of development. Most
places are not like EA in that they are not trying to wring their
programmers dry. EA is unique in that it expects a steady influx of new
programmers to replace the programmers who quit looking for a job
somewhere else.
-- MJF
Adam Connor <···@nospam.com> wrote in
>
> Much as I like Lisp, its advantages seem complex to explain and
> therefore unlikely to attract attention. I'm hoping others in this
> newsgroup, who understand it better, can think of a way to explain
> Lisp's benefits in a more effective way...
I can only evangelize within my problem domains: 3D graphics and AI for
games. I haven't been converted to either Lisp or Scheme yet. I'm
still going up the learning curve, of "Ok, where *is* the advantage,
actually?" I do have a plan for converting success in my endeavors into
a marketing agenda. But first I need the success.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Adam Connor wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 18:47:29 GMT, "Brandon J. Van Every"
> <·····················@mycompanyname.com> wrote:>
>
>>Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote in
>>···················@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it:
>>
>>>Some time ago, back at the ALU CLiki site, I created these pages and
>>>tried to keep them up to date: [...]
>
>>Your business critics are "sorta correct" when they look at Lisp success
>>stories and say things like "Lisp is dead, there's not enough Lisp."
>>It's not a fair comment at a personal level, to the maintainer of a
>>marketing website, but at a business level the lack of apparent volume,
>>robustness, and maintenance of a marketing website does say something
>>about the scale of Lisp. Businesses are interested in industrial-grade
>>activity, usually. Unless they're a particularly brainy business that
>>doesn't need a lot of preaching to, to adopt something like Lisp.
>
> As someone looking at the problem of evangelizing Lisp from within an
> organization, I think this is the wrong tactic to take with Lisp. No
> one cares whether there are a few companies here or there using Lisp
> -- so what? That's an appeal to popularity (let's do what others do),
> and Lisp cannot win such a battle.
>
> Eventually one needs to reassure managers that adopting Lisp is not a
> ridiculous risk, and the case studies may be useful there. But that is
> a second-order problem. The first-order problem is convincing
> management that there is a compelling advantage to adopting Lisp.
If you need to convince management that you are using the right tools,
then maybe you are working under the wrong management.
> Much as I like Lisp, its advantages seem complex to explain and
> therefore unlikely to attract attention. I'm hoping others in this
> newsgroup, who understand it better, can think of a way to explain
> Lisp's benefits in a more effective way...
Apparently, there is something going terribly wrong in the IT industry.
Just try to imagine a similar situation in other disciplines. Should
doctors convince hospital management that they are using the right
tools? Physicists, architects, industrial engineers, whatever? When you
go out for a dinner, do you ask the waiter what tools the cook is using?
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
Pascal Costanza wrote:
> Apparently, there is something going terribly wrong in the IT industry.
> Just try to imagine a similar situation in other disciplines. Should
> doctors convince hospital management that they are using the right
> tools? Physicists, architects, industrial engineers, whatever? When you
> go out for a dinner, do you ask the waiter what tools the cook is using?
Interesting, yes. Why do managers always decree that Java be
used? This seems like a case of severe pharma-marketing by Sun
and the self-proclaimed Java experts; we tell you what medicine to
use and make some money off that. Seems to be profitable if you
look at the number of books on Java and software engineering
papers that use Java.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Pascal Costanza wrote:
>
> Apparently, there is something going terribly wrong in the IT industry.
> Just try to imagine a similar situation in other disciplines. Should
> doctors convince hospital management that they are using the right
> tools? Physicists, architects, industrial engineers, whatever? When you
> go out for a dinner, do you ask the waiter what tools the cook is using?
Well, if four out of five (or whatever the current more-than-half number
is) of patients seeing a doctor came out worse than when they went in,
at great expense, or four out of five dishes served at an average
restaurant came to the table cold or inedible, or four out of five
buildings designed by typical architects were uninhabitable or just
plain fell down...
But things in those fields have progressed to the point where you don't
have to ask whether the cook has heard of fire or the doctor has
abandoned the theory of choleric and phlegmatic humors.
Now there would be an interesting statistic for someone to collect: what
percentage of software projects using Lisp (comparing oranges with
oranges as much as possible) have come in on time, on budget, and with
the capabilities the user asked for?
paul
Paul Wallich <··@panix.com> writes:
> what percentage of software projects using Lisp (comparing oranges
> with oranges as much as possible) have come in on time, on budget,
> and with the capabilities the user asked for?
I'm not convinced that implementation language has much influence on
meeting these criteria. Lisp may allow one to work faster or more
easily, but, once recognized by those imposing the above criteria,
schedules and budgets will get ratcheted down again low enough to
ensure "failure".
--
Steven E. Harris
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 00:53:55 +0200, Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net>
wrote:
>Adam Connor wrote:
>
>> Much as I like Lisp, its advantages seem complex to explain and
>> therefore unlikely to attract attention. I'm hoping others in this
>> newsgroup, who understand it better, can think of a way to explain
>> Lisp's benefits in a more effective way...
>
>Apparently, there is something going terribly wrong in the IT industry.
>Just try to imagine a similar situation in other disciplines. Should
>doctors convince hospital management that they are using the right
>tools? Physicists, architects, industrial engineers, whatever? When you
>go out for a dinner, do you ask the waiter what tools the cook is using?
This is the kind of response that makes me wonder whether most Lispers
have much real-world experience. Most shops like to stick to a modest
number of tools, and you need management buy-in if you want your tool
to be one of them. That is the nature of most business decisions. The
reasons for standardization are simple and practical: it makes it
easier to move developers from project to project, easier to know whom
to hire (or how to train them if necessary), etc.
I love reading comp.lang.lisp, but sometimes it seems like it is
inhabited by PhDs from the ivory tower. Most shops employ programmers
with lesser credentials, to say the least, and the average skill level
is, well, average. If the comp.lang.lisp answer is that "Lisp is not
the right tool for that environment" or that "we don't care", well,
that would explain the thin supply of Lisp jobs.
But it frustrates me, because I see a great language that could be
much more widely used.
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
Adam Connor <···@nospam.com> writes:
> Most shops like to stick to a modest number of tools, and you need
> management buy-in if you want your tool to be one of them. That is
> the nature of most business decisions. The reasons for
> standardization are simple and practical: it makes it easier to move
> developers from project to project, easier to know whom to hire (or
> how to train them if necessary), etc.
Here's the thing--most shops like to stick not only to a modest number
of tools but to the same set of tools they know all the other shops
are using. There are a number of reasons for this, some rational, some
semi-rational, and some just stupid. But, and this is the important
bit, this mindset is equally common among managers and technical
folks. Most developers I know aren't any more interested in Lisp than
their managers are.[1]
So what happens when a Lisper tries to advocate using Lisp? Assuming
management is smart and recognizes that choice of programming language
is largely a technical decision, they ask the other technical folks
what they think of this idea. And the other techs tell them that Joe
Lisper, despite being quite smart, has this weird quirk of liking this
old language with lots of parens. So management says sorry Joe, we're
sticking with Java. And nobody gets fired for using what all the other
companies are using.
Given that, what can a Lisper do? I'd say you've got to spread the
word to the technical folks first. It's not like there are a million
programmers who *want* to be using Lisp being forced to program in
Java by ignorant management. There are a million programmers *happily*
using Java. And even technical folks also care about what might be
characterized as "non-technical" characteristics of the languages they
spend time learning such as, are their jobs available using this
language? Or technical aspects outside the pure language definition
such as, are there lots of readily available libraries and tools for
working with the language.
The good news is that technical folks *can* be won over by
demonstrated technical superiority. The reason I wrote my book is that
I think there are a lot of folks who *think* they know about Lisp but
really don't. Thus it's easy to lose them when trying to show them how
great Lisp is because it's so easy for them to decide they already
know what they think they know and that it's not worth their time to
give it another shot. If we can just explain Lisp in a way that
doesn't cause their existing anti-Lisp antibodies to fire then we can
actually show them what a sweet language Lisp is and have increased
the odds that next time Joe Lispers pushes for Lisp that management
will hear from it's techs, "Yeah, Lisp rocks; I wish we were using
it." I spent a bunch of time thinking about how to present Lisp to
smart non-Lispers--to see how I think it should be done, check out
<http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book>.
But even explaining Lisp properly isn't necessarily enough because
even if every programmer on the planet understands how great Lisp is,
they're still quite likely to tell management, "Yeah, Lisp rocks, but
nobody really uses it."
So, to get back to your point--I think many Lispers realize exactly
how the "real world" works. They realize that Lisp adoption is a
chicken and egg problem--to get people to use Lisp we need to be able
to show them that people use Lisp. So the best (and perhaps only)
thing you can do, if you want Lisp to be used more, is to use it. If
you can use it in a small way at your current job, great. Or if you
can get in early at the right kind of start up where tool choices are
less constrained, you can use write a whole product in it, have a big
success, and generate some Lisp jobs. Or you can use it for your own
non-work projects and while you're at it write and publish
high-quality libraries for others to use, lowering the barriers to
entry for those that come after you. But if even the folks--such as
yourself--who already understand what a great language Lisp is can't
actually gear up to use it then it's never going to be adopted by the
many skeptics out there.
-Peter
[1] Yes Sun's spent a bunch of money on "marketing" Java but that
marketing was aimed primarily at developers, at least in the early
days. It was relatively late in the game, when enough developers had
adopted Java for their own technical reasons, that it was possible to
market it to "management" as a solution to business problems at which
point the ball was rolling and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy
that there would be jobs for Java developers as far as the eye could
see.
--
Peter Seibel ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 01:59:45 GMT, Peter Seibel <·····@gigamonkeys.com>
wrote:
>The good news is that technical folks *can* be won over by
>demonstrated technical superiority. The reason I wrote my book is that
>I think there are a lot of folks who *think* they know about Lisp but
>really don't. Thus it's easy to lose them when trying to show them how
>great Lisp is because it's so easy for them to decide they already
>know what they think they know and that it's not worth their time to
>give it another shot. If we can just explain Lisp in a way that
>doesn't cause their existing anti-Lisp antibodies to fire then we can
>actually show them what a sweet language Lisp is and have increased
>the odds that next time Joe Lispers pushes for Lisp that management
>will hear from it's techs, "Yeah, Lisp rocks; I wish we were using
>it." I spent a bunch of time thinking about how to present Lisp to
>smart non-Lispers--to see how I think it should be done, check out
><http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book>.
Oh, I've already done that, and even made a little bit of headway.
Most programmers, sadly, do not read books. Strange but there it is.
I think that one can get management's attention if a relatively small
number of highly respected programmers within the organization will
vouch for it. But I suspect it will take much more than that to win
them over. I don't blame them for being skeptical. While Lisp is a
great language, not being popular has real downsides. Hence, my
question as to whether it has any really compelling talking points.
(Macros would be one, if it can be articulated to a manager.)
>... But if even the folks--such as
>yourself--who already understand what a great language Lisp is can't
>actually gear up to use it then it's never going to be adopted by the
>many skeptics out there.
Realistically, most programmers will decide to use something less
powerful but more likely to be acceptable in their workplace (e.g.,
Ruby). The number of programmers willing to make sacrifices for Lisp
is going to be pretty small.
However, I haven't given up on evangelism just yet. It's an
interesting problem and I have a fair degree of patience.
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
Adam Connor wrote:
> I think that one can get management's attention if a relatively small
> number of highly respected programmers within the organization will
> vouch for it. But I suspect it will take much more than that to win
> them over. I don't blame them for being skeptical. While Lisp is a
> great language, not being popular has real downsides. Hence, my
> question as to whether it has any really compelling talking points.
> (Macros would be one, if it can be articulated to a manager.)
Don't articulate it, show it. Write a program that would be much harder
to implement in the other languages you are currently using, demonstrate
it, and then give them the numbers (how much work spent, etc.)
If you merely articulate it, there will always be people who doubt what
you're saying. And they are right in doing so.
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
Pascal Costanza wrote:
> Don't articulate it, show it. Write a program that would be much
harder
> to implement in the other languages you are currently using,
demonstrate
> it, and then give them the numbers (how much work spent, etc.)
>
> If you merely articulate it, there will always be people who doubt
what
> you're saying. And they are right in doing so.
That will help convince technical people, but the average manager won't
have any sense of whether a given program is easier to solve in Lisp
than Java, and since they don't program in either language, showing
them code won't get me very far.
So I think you're solving a different problem than the one I asked
about.
Adam Connor wrote:
> Pascal Costanza wrote:
>
>> Don't articulate it, show it. Write a program that would be much
>> harder to implement in the other languages you are currently using,
>> demonstrate it, and then give them the numbers (how much work
>> spent, etc.)
>>
>> If you merely articulate it, there will always be people who doubt
>> what you're saying. And they are right in doing so.
>
> That will help convince technical people, but the average manager
> won't have any sense of whether a given program is easier to solve in
> Lisp than Java, and since they don't program in either language,
> showing them code won't get me very far.
>
> So I think you're solving a different problem than the one I asked
> about.
You are missing the part about "give them the numbers". That's what they
usually understand, there's where they can measure stuff like
"competitive advantage". Especially because they don't understand the
technical details, one has to find ways to translate it into things they
understand.
Marketing won't help, because everyone knows that you can market
anything. Facts are usually more convincing.
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
Pascal Costanza wrote:
> Adam Connor wrote:
> > Pascal Costanza wrote:
> >> Don't articulate it, show it. Write a program that would be much
> >> harder to implement in the other languages you are currently
> >> using, demonstrate it, and then give them the numbers (how much
> >> work spent, etc.)
> >>
> >> If you merely articulate it, there will always be people who
> >> doubt what you're saying. And they are right in doing so.
> >
> > That will help convince technical people, but the average manager
> > won't have any sense of whether a given program is easier to solve
> > in Lisp than Java, and since they don't program in either
> > language, showing them code won't get me very far.
> >
> > So I think you're solving a different problem than the one I asked
> > about.
>
> You are missing the part about "give them the numbers". That's what
> they usually understand, there's where they can measure stuff like
> "competitive advantage". Especially because they don't understand the
> technical details, one has to find ways to translate it into things
> they understand.
>
> Marketing won't help, because everyone knows that you can market
> anything. Facts are usually more convincing.
Normal marketing appears to be a flawed strategy when the marketing
dept doesn't have serious influence over the producers.
I think Peter's book is an example of people willing to fund
production, as long as it's through conventional, established means.
Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> wrote in news:3chmnuF6ie446U1
>
> Marketing won't help, because everyone knows that you can market
> anything.
That's a crazy assumption. Marketing helps A LOT, despite people's
awareness that marketing exists. Perhaps you don't know what marketing
is, and figure it's pretty much synonymous with putting a spin on things
or lying to people.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> wrote in news:3chmnuF6ie446U1
>
>>Marketing won't help, because everyone knows that you can market
>>anything.
>
> That's a crazy assumption. Marketing helps A LOT, despite people's
> awareness that marketing exists. Perhaps you don't know what marketing
> is, and figure it's pretty much synonymous with putting a spin on things
> or lying to people.
No, my point is that these two things are essentially not distinguishable.
How is a manager or any other non-programmer supposed to know the
difference between "Lisp is a great language" and "Intercal is a great
language"? Why should they be interested in technical details of
arguments for or against such statements, even if you present only some
of them as a digest? What if you can't convince them? Does this mean
you're wrong? What if the Intercal guy convinces them? Does this mean
he's right?
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> wrote in
····················@individual.net:
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>
>> Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> wrote in news:3chmnuF6ie446U1
>>
>>>Marketing won't help, because everyone knows that you can market
>>>anything.
>>
>> That's a crazy assumption. Marketing helps A LOT, despite people's
>> awareness that marketing exists. Perhaps you don't know what
>> marketing is, and figure it's pretty much synonymous with putting a
>> spin on things or lying to people.
>
> No, my point is that these two things are essentially not
> distinguishable.
That's false / crazy.
> How is a manager or any other non-programmer supposed to know the
> difference between "Lisp is a great language" and "Intercal is a great
> language"?
Marketing is often the act of providing explanations in a way palatable
to the audience, taking into account their tastes and predispositions.
In short, marketing is often just "good communication," and that's real
work. If you don't believe it is possible to communicate effectively
with people, and don't wish to avail yourself of techniques for doing
so, well, then you won't believe than anyone can ever influence
anything.
One important marketing technique can be stated in the negative: don't
give your customer a reason to reject your products. For instance, ugly
logos like on the http://www.python.org website. This requires
awareness of the sensibilities of the customer. If they typically like
X and don't typically like Y, don't hand them a whole bunch of Y.
Most techies are too introverted to care what other people like or don't
like. They focus only on what they personally like or don't like, i.e.
they're hopeless marketers.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> wrote in
> ····················@individual.net:
>
>>Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>>
>>>Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> wrote in news:3chmnuF6ie446U1
>>>
>>>>Marketing won't help, because everyone knows that you can market
>>>>anything.
>>>
>>>That's a crazy assumption. Marketing helps A LOT, despite people's
>>>awareness that marketing exists. Perhaps you don't know what
>>>marketing is, and figure it's pretty much synonymous with putting a
>>>spin on things or lying to people.
>>
>>No, my point is that these two things are essentially not
>>distinguishable.
>
> That's false / crazy.
>
>>How is a manager or any other non-programmer supposed to know the
>>difference between "Lisp is a great language" and "Intercal is a great
>>language"?
>
> Marketing is often the act of providing explanations in a way palatable
> to the audience, taking into account their tastes and predispositions.
> In short, marketing is often just "good communication," and that's real
> work. If you don't believe it is possible to communicate effectively
> with people, and don't wish to avail yourself of techniques for doing
> so, well, then you won't believe than anyone can ever influence
> anything.
>
> One important marketing technique can be stated in the negative: don't
> give your customer a reason to reject your products. For instance, ugly
> logos like on the http://www.python.org website. This requires
> awareness of the sensibilities of the customer. If they typically like
> X and don't typically like Y, don't hand them a whole bunch of Y.
>
> Most techies are too introverted to care what other people like or don't
> like. They focus only on what they personally like or don't like, i.e.
> they're hopeless marketers.
This may all well be true or not, but none of this addresses my
question. A nice logo won't explain why Lisp is better than Intercal.
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 20:39:52 +0200, Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net>
wrote:
>This may all well be true or not, but none of this addresses my
>question. A nice logo won't explain why Lisp is better than Intercal.
Does intercal support domain-specific languages? Etc.
I don't dismiss the value of writing some Lisp programs to demonstrate
the language, but I'll be honest and say that I don't actually think
that is the make or break issue with typical managers. Or my managers,
anyhow -- I suspect they will take my word on the technical features,
it is convincing them of their suitability/applicability to typical
programmers that is more likely to be the issue. (As well as
vendor-related questions and general inertia.)
Thanks for your advice, though.
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> wrote in news:3cid7qF6gbncjU1
>
> This may all well be true or not, but none of this addresses my
> question. A nice logo won't explain why Lisp is better than Intercal.
I feel I am belaboring the points, but I'll try one last time to state
things succinctly.
Marketing has to be 'done'. It is not a theory. It is not subject to a
priori objections.
Marketing has many tools in the toolbox. Nice logos for suits is one of
'em. Many tools must be applied to conduct a successful marketing
campaign.
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
When no one else sells courage, supply and demand take hold.
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 14:15:57 +0200, Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net>
wrote:
>You are missing the part about "give them the numbers". That's what they
>usually understand, there's where they can measure stuff like
>"competitive advantage". Especially because they don't understand the
>technical details, one has to find ways to translate it into things they
>understand.
What exactly do you think I'm going to measure?
>Marketing won't help, because everyone knows that you can market
>anything. Facts are usually more convincing.
I don't think you've worked in very typical organizations...
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> writes:
> Don't articulate it, show it.
Emphasizing this further, reading about or hearing about using Lisp is
not enough. It has to be demonstrated and experienced interactively.
I read a few Lisp books over the course of a couple of years,
satisfying curiosity but never really buying into its supposedly
obvious superiority. But it only took about ten minutes of /playing/
with CLISP and (at that point) ilisp to realize, "I will never
approach programming the same way again. I will never be satisfied
with less than this."
--
Steven E. Harris
"Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com> wrote in
····················@W003275.na.alarismed.com:
> Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> writes:
>
>> Don't articulate it, show it.
>
> Emphasizing this further, reading about or hearing about using Lisp is
> not enough. It has to be demonstrated and experienced interactively.
>
> I read a few Lisp books over the course of a couple of years,
> satisfying curiosity but never really buying into its supposedly
> obvious superiority. But it only took about ten minutes of /playing/
> with CLISP and (at that point) ilisp to realize, "I will never
> approach programming the same way again. I will never be satisfied
> with less than this."
I would like to point out that different people respond to different
things. I've always found the whole "play with it" approach to
programming a load of hooey. Which might partly explain my low level of
coding productivity, as I've never cared for any programming language at
the sentence level.
My view of programming is fundamentally architectonic. The way you
impress people like me, is to demonstrate an elegantly implemented
system that is unlikely to get done as easily in any other language.
The system must have sufficient elegance that the kernel of activity
fits into 1..3 pages of code. In short, programming to me is "a sort of
proof." It's an aesthetic activity, which is why I simply won't put up
with C++, Java, or C# anymore.
To date, my favorite programming language is ASM because the tasks are
necessarily limited in scope and thus, in my capable hands, always
result in elegance. I may not have liked the stone age era when
*everything* was coded in ASM, but fortunately, those times are long
gone.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> I would like to point out that different people respond to different
> things. I've always found the whole "play with it" approach to
> programming a load of hooey.
Maybe "play" was the wrong word then. Understand that I started
writing an application right away.
> Which might partly explain my low level of coding productivity, as
> I've never cared for any programming language at the sentence level.
Yes, those Python and Ruby tutorials, not to mention the similar Lisp
one, where we marvel that one can type "1 + 1" and see "2" are
terribly insulting. That's not what I'm talking about here.
Writing Lisp code in a suitable environment allows one to evaluate any
piece of code, from an atom to form to a whole region of code,
interactively, with no cutting, pasting, or "rehearsing" of writing
the actual code.
You write C++ for games, so you probably have a lot of experience with
MSVC. One nice feature MSVC has had for a long time is the "tool tip"
display of a variable's or constant's value during debugging. Of
course, one can also set up "watched" variables or expressions, and,
if willing to commit to some serious head banging, evaluate
expressions interactively. I don't really understand how to get the
latter feature to work; I just see it there mocking me from time to
time.
Those code/value/behavior inspection features are only available at
certain times in certain circumstances for certain values. But with
Lisp, one never needs to switch in and out of having that same
exploratory power. We can debate writing styles: bottom-up, top-down,
but it doesn't matter. All are equally well supported.
A bit of Lisp code trapped inside a much larger function can be tested
more or less in-place. In my experience writing C and C++ code, I
often see bits of code similarly trapped that never get tested because
there's no clear way to guide the code path to them within the
containing application. That is, code tends to grow within an
expanding and impenetrable outer shell (usually an application
boundary) that inhibits testing and hence confidence in all that it
contains. Sure, we know the prescribed tenets of modularity and unit
testing, but large teams can rarely maintain sufficient control over
the code base, to work at a slow enough pace, to keep every line of
code transparently accessible for inspection.
I've been writing C++ for long enough to work with great confidence,
yet I still sometimes find myself saying, "Hmm, I'd better write a
small test harness so I can get in the debugger and make sure that's
doing what I want it to do." Thirty minutes and a half page of code
later, I may have satisfied my concerns. That kind of throw-away
effort is never necessary when writing in Lisp.
If you've ever struggled to get a few statements correct in a larger
program, you'd appreciate how easily with Lisp one can pull the group
out, refine it as a complete program no less complete than the entire
application, and put it back into place, now confident, without having
disturbed the rest of the program to permit the required exploration.
Again I say, the process has to be witnessed more than told.
--
Steven E. Harris
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:17:17 +0000, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> My view of programming is fundamentally architectonic. The way you
> impress people like me, is to demonstrate an elegantly implemented
> system that is unlikely to get done as easily in any other language.
> The system must have sufficient elegance that the kernel of activity
> fits into 1..3 pages of code. In short, programming to me is "a sort of
> proof." It's an aesthetic activity, which is why I simply won't put up
> with C++, Java, or C# anymore.
>
> To date, my favorite programming language is ASM because the tasks are
> necessarily limited in scope and thus, in my capable hands, always
> result in elegance. I may not have liked the stone age era when
> *everything* was coded in ASM, but fortunately, those times are long
> gone.
You're the funny man .. haha .. me laugh now .. hihi .. :]
ok - break over; back to real world now I go
--
mvh,
Lars Rune Nøstdal
http://lars.nostdal.org/
Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> writes:
> Don't articulate it, show it. Write a program that would be much
> harder to implement in the other languages you are currently using,
> demonstrate it, and then give them the numbers (how much work spent,
> etc.)
Back in 1997 I used lisp (with CL-HTTP) to create a small project web
server on my workstation which was relatively impressing (*)
wrt. features and ease-to-use compared to most of the commercial and
in-house 'portals' the management already knew. This helped me
convince the managers that we could also create customer service web
applications (and other application servers, all of which was the goal
of this project) with lisp.
(besides, the project web server was actually useful to the project :-))
(*) at least when they counted the man-hours
--
(espen)
Peter Seibel wrote:
> So what happens when a Lisper tries to advocate using Lisp? Assuming
> management is smart and recognizes that choice of programming language
> is largely a technical decision, they ask the other technical folks
> what they think of this idea. And the other techs tell them that Joe
> Lisper, despite being quite smart, has this weird quirk of liking this
> old language with lots of parens. So management says sorry Joe, we're
> sticking with Java. And nobody gets fired for using what all the other
> companies are using.
In some cases the company might wither and die, because it can't
differentiate from competitors, but admittedly, most Java shops
probably do quite well.
> The good news is that technical folks *can* be won over by
> demonstrated technical superiority. The reason I wrote my book is that
> I think there are a lot of folks who *think* they know about Lisp but
> really don't. Thus it's easy to lose them when trying to show them how
> great Lisp is because it's so easy for them to decide they already
> know what they think they know and that it's not worth their time to
> give it another shot. If we can just explain Lisp in a way that
> doesn't cause their existing anti-Lisp antibodies to fire then we can
> actually show them what a sweet language Lisp is and have increased
> the odds that next time Joe Lispers pushes for Lisp that management
> will hear from it's techs, "Yeah, Lisp rocks; I wish we were using
> it." I spent a bunch of time thinking about how to present Lisp to
> smart non-Lispers--to see how I think it should be done, check out
> <http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book>.
Just wait what happens. In a year, when we all celebrate PCL's
anniversary we can have a survey, who (of the new ones) is using
Lisp then, how much they use it, and what they are doing or what
they did with it.
> But even explaining Lisp properly isn't necessarily enough because
> even if every programmer on the planet understands how great Lisp is,
> they're still quite likely to tell management, "Yeah, Lisp rocks, but
> nobody really uses it."
And we have to tell people that nobody cares who else uses a
language. It's *what* they do with it. If they can write a
really cool program, who cares if their neighbors all use Java and
create some boring applets with it?
I know, there is the community aspect, as Brandon will likely
mention here. A not widely used language has fewer libraries, but
I think Lisp is slowly growing. At least that's the impression I
get here on c.l.l.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Adam Connor wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 00:53:55 +0200, Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net>
> wrote:
>
>>Adam Connor wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Much as I like Lisp, its advantages seem complex to explain and
>>>therefore unlikely to attract attention. I'm hoping others in this
>>>newsgroup, who understand it better, can think of a way to explain
>>>Lisp's benefits in a more effective way...
>>
>>Apparently, there is something going terribly wrong in the IT industry.
>>Just try to imagine a similar situation in other disciplines. Should
>>doctors convince hospital management that they are using the right
>>tools? Physicists, architects, industrial engineers, whatever? When you
>>go out for a dinner, do you ask the waiter what tools the cook is using?
>
> This is the kind of response that makes me wonder whether most Lispers
> have much real-world experience. Most shops like to stick to a modest
> number of tools, and you need management buy-in if you want your tool
> to be one of them. That is the nature of most business decisions. The
> reasons for standardization are simple and practical: it makes it
> easier to move developers from project to project, easier to know whom
> to hire (or how to train them if necessary), etc.
That's often claimed. Is it actually true?
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:26:07 +0200, Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net>
wrote:
>Adam Connor wrote:
>> This is the kind of response that makes me wonder whether most Lispers
>> have much real-world experience. Most shops like to stick to a modest
>> number of tools, and you need management buy-in if you want your tool
>> to be one of them. That is the nature of most business decisions. The
>> reasons for standardization are simple and practical: it makes it
>> easier to move developers from project to project, easier to know whom
>> to hire (or how to train them if necessary), etc.
>
>That's often claimed. Is it actually true?
It certainly makes it easier to move developers from project to
project. Does it make it easier to hire useful developers? I don't
know. Probably it makes it easier for average managers to hire average
developers -- which may meet their goals.
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
Adam Connor wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:26:07 +0200, Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net>
> wrote:
>
>
>>Adam Connor wrote:
>>
>>>This is the kind of response that makes me wonder whether most Lispers
>>>have much real-world experience. Most shops like to stick to a modest
>>>number of tools, and you need management buy-in if you want your tool
>>>to be one of them. That is the nature of most business decisions. The
>>>reasons for standardization are simple and practical: it makes it
>>>easier to move developers from project to project, easier to know whom
>>>to hire (or how to train them if necessary), etc.
>>
>>That's often claimed. Is it actually true?
>
>
> It certainly makes it easier to move developers from project to
> project.
I really don't believe this. Each project requires domain knowledge, and
that's the hard part.
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
Pascal Costanza wrote:
> Adam Connor wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:26:07 +0200, Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Adam Connor wrote:
>>>
>>>> This is the kind of response that makes me wonder whether most Lispers
>>>> have much real-world experience. Most shops like to stick to a modest
>>>> number of tools, and you need management buy-in if you want your tool
>>>> to be one of them. That is the nature of most business decisions. The
>>>> reasons for standardization are simple and practical: it makes it
>>>> easier to move developers from project to project, easier to know whom
>>>> to hire (or how to train them if necessary), etc.
>>>
>>>
>>> That's often claimed. Is it actually true?
>>
>>
>>
>> It certainly makes it easier to move developers from project to
>> project.
>
>
> I really don't believe this. Each project requires domain knowledge,
> and that's the hard part.
>
YMMV but not in an industry as dysfunctional as the game industry!
Large outfits like EA just shovel people around from one thing to the next.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"We live in a world of very bright people building
crappy software with total shit for tools and process."
- Ed McKenzie
On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:41:59 GMT, "Brandon J. Van Every"
<·····················@mycompanyname.com> wrote:
>Pascal Costanza wrote:
>> I really don't believe this. Each project requires domain knowledge,
>> and that's the hard part.
>>
>YMMV but not in an industry as dysfunctional as the game industry!
>Large outfits like EA just shovel people around from one thing to the next.
In a perfect world, programmers would easily move from language to
language and deep domain knowledge would be a key factor. In much of
the real world, the guy who knows COBOL may not be able to quickly
adapt to Java (or vice-versa) and many lack domain knowledge. (If
domain knowledge were actually required there wouldn't be such a rush
to outsource to India or wherever's cheapest next week.)
I'm not defending the status quo, just trying to figure out how to
improve my own little portion of it.
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> writes:
> Adam Connor wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:26:07 +0200, Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>Adam Connor wrote:
>>>
>>>>This is the kind of response that makes me wonder whether most Lispers
>>>>have much real-world experience. Most shops like to stick to a modest
>>>>number of tools, and you need management buy-in if you want your tool
>>>>to be one of them. That is the nature of most business decisions. The
>>>>reasons for standardization are simple and practical: it makes it
>>>>easier to move developers from project to project, easier to know whom
>>>>to hire (or how to train them if necessary), etc.
>>>
>>>That's often claimed. Is it actually true?
>> It certainly makes it easier to move developers from project to
>> project.
>
> I really don't believe this. Each project requires domain knowledge,
> and that's the hard part.
>
Unfortunately, there are too many developers who don't like changing
to another development language and often it can take people a long
time before they become proficient at a new language. I also think
maintenance is a big issue - if you only have a couple of people
skilled in a language and they are then moved off onto other projects,
who will maintain the software?
Tim
--
Tim Cross
The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is
to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you
really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!
Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> wrote in news:3cg7o6F6lr3hvU1
>
> If you need to convince management that you are using the right tools,
> then maybe you are working under the wrong management.
Maybe if you don't like convincing people of things, you shouldn't be in
business.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> wrote in news:3cg7o6F6lr3hvU1
>
>>If you need to convince management that you are using the right tools,
>>then maybe you are working under the wrong management.
>
> Maybe if you don't like convincing people of things, you shouldn't be in
> business.
That's an invalid generalization of what I said. Of course, you should
be able to convince management that you can write good programs (for
some context-specific definition of "good").
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> writes:
> Apparently, there is something going terribly wrong in the IT
> industry. Just try to imagine a similar situation in other
> disciplines. Should doctors convince hospital management that they
> are using the right tools?
Actually, historically doctors have not been that much better at
choosing the right tools (treatments, procedures, diagnostics, etc)
than programmers. Only in the past couple decades has "evidence based
medicine" really taken off. In evidence based medicine, treatments are
ideally only used after they've been shown to be efficacious by
research (double blind studies where possible, etc.) But when evidence
based medicine was first started many doctors were opposed to it (or
opposed to bothering to do the studies) on the grounds that individual
doctors had sufficient "clinical judgement" based on their own
experience. And it did in fact take "management" overriding doctors to
force them to consistently use certain treatments or procedures that
had been shown to be efficacious. (Obviously clinical judgement is
still important as every patient is slightly different. But less than
doctors used to like to think.)
Unfortunately it's not clear how to practice evidence-based IT--it
seems that different software projects are more different than
different patients a doctor might see. (Medicine has a similar problem
when, for instance, drugs are tested on adults and then given to
children--the evidence that they were useful for treating adults may
not apply when treating children.)
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Peter Seibel <·····@gigamonkeys.com> wrote:
+---------------
| Unfortunately it's not clear how to practice evidence-based IT--it
| seems that different software projects are more different than
| different patients a doctor might see.
+---------------
I don't think that's so much the problem as that the industry as a
whole has simply stopped doing any computer *science*. That is, you
can't have "evidence-based IT" if you never collect any evidence!!
As Tom DeMarco began one of his best (IMHO) books[1], "You can't
control what you can't measure." [...or what you don't bother to!]
If you look back at all the papers -- and I *don't* mean from just
academia, but from industrial/commercial/governmental organizations
as well -- that were published in the 50's and into the 80's, there
were *plenty* of serious attempts to quantify the difficulty of the
task of software specification, design, development, and maintenance.
It didn't result in any "magic bullets", but then the problem was and
is *hard*!!
But the Rise of Worse is Better seems to have completely put an end
to any wide-spread attempt to closely examine the *act* of software
development in any meaningful, "scientific" way [by which I mean the
collection of predictive metrics, doing controlled experiments, even
work on cognitive models of programming, etc.].
Pity.
-Rob
[1] Tom DeMarco, "Controlling Software Projects: Management,
Measurement, and Estimatation", Prentice Hall (1982) ISBN
0917072324 [trade paperback]. Reprinted 1986, ISBN 0131717111.
Particularly interesting is his discussion of the social/political
difficulties in getting good "metrics", and his proposal for
an independent metrics team that is rewarded by the inverse
of the integral of the *absolute value* of the difference
between their estimates at any moment during the project and
the final overall actual result. [They are free to change their
estimates at any time, but the previous estimates still apply
to the interval during which they were in force.]
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
Peter Seibel wrote:
> Unfortunately it's not clear how to practice evidence-based IT--it
> seems that different software projects are more different than
> different patients a doctor might see.
Definitely, software projects are much more different than disease
symptoms and their causes. But at least in the case of components
communicating over standard sockets (web services?) it might be
interesting to replace individual components and combinations
thereof. So you might show that a given Lisp implementation of a
component is smaller (code size, RAM, CPU consumption) than a
given Java implementation (of course implementations differ, but
this might create interesting competition!), or that two
components combined in a single Lisp component (with the same
outward interface) are much smaller/simpler than the two
components (or their combined component) in other languages.
It's open how well this can be done with commercial components,
and even with open source it might be more useful to create *new*
components in Lisp than recode other languages' implementations,
but in some cases (the combining many components into one Lisp
image) it might be worthwhile.
What would an Eclipse in Lisp look like (non-compatible, just
similar functionality and plugin-capability)?
What an XUL-replacement (Mozilla's (and Firefox's, Thunderbird's)
User-interface engine, which consists of XML descriptions for GUI
descriptions and JavaScript as the programming language)?
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: (OT) Evidence-based medicine (was Re: Lisp success stories)
Date:
Message-ID: <j66dnWLe0YwVI_7fRVn-3g@dls.net>
Peter Seibel wrote:
> But when evidence
> based medicine was first started many doctors were opposed to it (or
> opposed to bothering to do the studies) on the grounds that individual
> doctors had sufficient "clinical judgement" based on their own
> experience. And it did in fact take "management" overriding doctors to
> force them to consistently use certain treatments or procedures that
> had been shown to be efficacious.
Even worse, doctors used procedures that they *thought* were effective,
when in fact they were actually (on average) harmful. Like anyone else,
doctors are prone to emphasize the cases in which the treatment appeared
to help, forgetting the cases in which it didn't.
A fairly recent example of this was the 'brain bypass' operation,
where a blood vessel is grafted onto the brain to try to bypass
an existing, dangerously clogged artery.
Paul
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> Techies may object that the tone and style of presentation shouldn't
> matter. Indeed, the eyesore known as http://www.python.org is the arch
> objection. But when you want to move suits, you pay attention to tone
> and style.
What's wrong with www.python.org? I find it well-structured,
clean and easy to pick a link you like, unlike many other websites
(blogs come to mind) with their busy stuff in three columns that
distract you from their content.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote in
····················@individual.net:
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>> Techies may object that the tone and style of presentation shouldn't
>> matter. Indeed, the eyesore known as http://www.python.org is the
>> arch objection. But when you want to move suits, you pay attention
>> to tone and style.
>
> What's wrong with www.python.org?
For starters, their logo is a POS. Compare, for instance,
http://www.java.com
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>>What's wrong with www.python.org?
>
>
> For starters, their logo is a POS. Compare, for instance,
> http://www.java.com
Ugh. Three columns that evoke a horizontal scrollbar, full of
distracting graphics (looks more like a page oriented to kids than
a programming site).
But the Java logo is sweet, yes.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote in
> ···················@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it:
>
>
>>"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
>>writes:
>>
>>
>>>things to think about. If you want to prove utility, it's better to
>>>present a pile of Testimonials to managerial types. An example of
>>>this approach is http://www.franz.com/success/
>>
>>It doesn't work.
>>
>>Some time ago, back at the ALU CLiki site, I created these pages and
>>tried to keep them up to date: [...]
>>
>>When people noticed even a single stale link, they said that Lisp had
>>been abandoned, or that the companies mentioned in the pages no longer
>>used it. If the links were fine, they said that the number of
>>companies/organizations using Lisp was negligible anyway.
>>
>>So, I gave up updating those pages. Now I write Lisp code.
>
>
> This sounds like China giving up on maritime exploration,...
Good analogy. They built the first ships, sailed around a little and saw
what Europe was like, returned home, burned the ships, built the wall.
Short term was bumpy. had to fork over Hong Kong in 1841 because they
were outgunned. Got it back in 1997, when the British had become lackeys
for reagan and later Bush. Now they are about to bury the US, and rule
the globe until the next asteroid hits.
Some of us looked at C++ and its fix, Java, quickly burned all our
O'Reillys and took up Lisp. Sold our souls to put food on the table, but
will soon be the only folks working. Until the next asteroid hits.
kenny
--
Cells? Cello? Cells-Gtk?: http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
"Doctor, I wrestled with reality for forty years, and I am happy to
state that I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 01:40:37 GMT, Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com>
wrote:
>Good analogy. They built the first ships, sailed around a little and saw
>what Europe was like, returned home, burned the ships, built the wall.
>Short term was bumpy. had to fork over Hong Kong in 1841 because they
>were outgunned. Got it back in 1997, when the British had become lackeys
>for reagan and later Bush. Now they are about to bury the US, and rule
>the globe until the next asteroid hits.
>
>Some of us looked at C++ and its fix, Java, quickly burned all our
>O'Reillys and took up Lisp. Sold our souls to put food on the table, but
>will soon be the only folks working. Until the next asteroid hits.
That's a nice story for the faithful, but, alas, it will not convince
anyone disposed to doubt Lisp's greatness.
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
Adam Connor <···@nospam.com> writes:
> On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 01:40:37 GMT, Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com>
> wrote:
> >Good analogy. They built the first ships, sailed around a little and saw
> >what Europe was like, returned home, burned the ships, built the wall.
> >Short term was bumpy. had to fork over Hong Kong in 1841 because they
> >were outgunned. Got it back in 1997, when the British had become lackeys
> >for reagan and later Bush. Now they are about to bury the US, and rule
> >the globe until the next asteroid hits.
> >
> >Some of us looked at C++ and its fix, Java, quickly burned all our
> >O'Reillys and took up Lisp. Sold our souls to put food on the table, but
> >will soon be the only folks working. Until the next asteroid hits.
>
> That's a nice story for the faithful, but, alas, it will not convince
> anyone disposed to doubt Lisp's greatness.
Perhaps. But just to be safe, I ordered a copy of "Learn Mandarine in
21 Days."
--
An ideal world is left as an excercise to the reader.
--- Paul Graham, On Lisp 8.1
No excuses. No apologies. Just do it.
--- Erik Naggum
David Steuber wrote:
> Adam Connor <···@nospam.com> writes:
>
>
>>On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 01:40:37 GMT, Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>Good analogy. They built the first ships, sailed around a little and saw
>>>what Europe was like, returned home, burned the ships, built the wall.
>>>Short term was bumpy. had to fork over Hong Kong in 1841 because they
>>>were outgunned. Got it back in 1997, when the British had become lackeys
>>>for reagan and later Bush. Now they are about to bury the US, and rule
>>>the globe until the next asteroid hits.
>>>
>>>Some of us looked at C++ and its fix, Java, quickly burned all our
>>>O'Reillys and took up Lisp. Sold our souls to put food on the table, but
>>>will soon be the only folks working. Until the next asteroid hits.
>>
>>That's a nice story for the faithful, but, alas, it will not convince
>>anyone disposed to doubt Lisp's greatness.
>
>
> Perhaps. But just to be safe, I ordered a copy of "Learn Mandarine in
> 21 Days."
>
Good move. But it should not take twenty-one days. Very sensible
language. No conjugation, no tense. Imagine nothing but the infinitive.
And the two thousand characters you need to know to read a newspaper
should be nothing to EMACS veterans.
:)
kenny
--
Cells? Cello? Cells-Gtk?: http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
"Doctor, I wrestled with reality for forty years, and I am happy to
state that I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote in news:peE8e.1955$yl6.947922
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>> Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote in
>>>
>>> So, I gave up updating those pages. Now I write Lisp code.
>>
>> This sounds like China giving up on maritime exploration,...
>
> Good analogy. They built the first ships, sailed around a little and
> saw what Europe was like, returned home, burned the ships, built the
> wall. Short term was bumpy. had to fork over Hong Kong in 1841 because
> they were outgunned. Got it back in 1997, when the British had become
> lackeys for reagan and later Bush. Now they are about to bury the US,
> and rule the globe until the next asteroid hits.
Ok, I'm trying to cut down on posts, but this one merits a choice
response. In no way did China "see what Europe was like." In 1431 they
made it to what is now Mozambique, not Europe. Shortly thereafter they
had a civil war between trade-oriented maritime expansionists Eunuchs
and agrarian land-oriented Confucians. Who, incidentally, thought
everything the Eunuchs were doing was immoral. The Confucians won the
war, burned the ships, and decreed that nobody was to travel anywhere.
This law persisted for almost 150 years. Europe had time to catch up
and gain the maritime initiative.
So again, this is "Emperor syndrome." One guy in charge decides it's
not the way to do things, and progress just stops. There's nothing
about the analogy that is good for Lisp. Failing to take over for 500
years, or 50 years, is just failure. There's no "noble justification"
or "proof of concept" at the end of it all. By analogy, I don't really
believe there's any certainty of China dominating the world in the
future. They've failed at it before, and other countries have had
plenty of time to establish the initiative. Particularly the EU. In
fact, maybe history will precisely repeat itself?
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 04:55:12 +0000, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote in news:peE8e.1955$yl6.947922
>> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>>> Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote in
>>>>
>>>> So, I gave up updating those pages. Now I write Lisp code.
>>>
>>> This sounds like China giving up on maritime exploration,...
>>
>> Good analogy. They built the first ships, sailed around a little and
>> saw what Europe was like, returned home, burned the ships, built the
>> wall. Short term was bumpy. had to fork over Hong Kong in 1841 because
>> they were outgunned. Got it back in 1997, when the British had become
>> lackeys for reagan and later Bush. Now they are about to bury the US,
>> and rule the globe until the next asteroid hits.
>
> Ok, I'm trying to cut down on posts,
You found out you had to do some coding too?
--
mvh,
Lars Rune Nøstdal
http://lars.nostdal.org/
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote in
> ···················@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it:
[...]
>> Some time ago, back at the ALU CLiki site, I created these pages and
>> tried to keep them up to date: [...]
>>
>> When people noticed even a single stale link, they said that Lisp had
>> been abandoned, or that the companies mentioned in the pages no longer
>> used it. If the links were fine, they said that the number of
>> companies/organizations using Lisp was negligible anyway.
>>
>> So, I gave up updating those pages. Now I write Lisp code.
[...]
> I am saying, if this project was your sole province, then that is not
> enough industrial effort to make it work. You need a whole bunch of
> people keeping links alive and actively promoting new material. The
Indeed. I did post calls for help, but got only a bunch of links or
fixes each time. Perhaps people were busy, wanted to keep Lisp as a
competitive advantage, or were just uninterested.
I am no longer sure whether posting more or better Lisp success
stories, or increasing marketing efforts, may help. Instead I prefer
to do, help with, or encourage activities I am reasonably sure don't
hurt: writing Lisp code, reporting/fixing bugs in existing
applications, writing documentation and new books, helping novices,
and, last but not least, using Lisp--even just for small personal
projects.
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote in
···················@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it:
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
> writes:
>
>> Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote in
>>>
>>> So, I gave up updating those pages. Now I write Lisp code.
> [...]
>> I am saying, if this project was your sole province, then that is not
>> enough industrial effort to make it work. You need a whole bunch of
>> people keeping links alive and actively promoting new material. The
>
> Indeed. I did post calls for help, but got only a bunch of links or
> fixes each time. Perhaps people were busy, wanted to keep Lisp as a
> competitive advantage, or were just uninterested.
You need a team of motivated volunteers at the outset to carry through
on this kind of work. Python had enough people to conjure up
such a team. They were productive, and Guido and the PSF were the
reason the effort failed.
In the OCaml universe, the first thing we did when starting a business
mailing list was set a deadline of 1 month to establish common ground on
what needed to be done. The purpose was to determine if the political
will existed to make the needed efforts. If we couldn't meet the
deadline, then we'd admit the project wasn't gonna get done and we'd
forget about it. Well, it only took 2 weeks to determine we weren't
viable. But at least we only spent 2 weeks on it, instead of many
months to get the same result.
Technology adoption is only a pseudo-technical problem. There are many
humanistic things one must do to get one's way upon the world.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
From: israel
Subject: Re: Lisp success stories (was: Re: "a language of failed dreams")
Date:
Message-ID: <877jizwnoq.fsf@kafka.homenet>
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> Franz has a decent page, but it could use some improvements in the
> presentation dept. http://www.franz.com/success/
> Indeed, the eyesore known as http://www.python.org is the arch
> objection.
www.indiegamedesign.com ?
israel <······@bigpond.net.au> wrote in
···················@kafka.homenet:
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
> writes:
>
>> Franz has a decent page, but it could use some improvements in the
>> presentation dept. http://www.franz.com/success/
>
>> Indeed, the eyesore known as http://www.python.org is the arch
>> objection.
>
> www.indiegamedesign.com ?
I'm not selling you anything, let alone a language. I'm in strictly
"R&D leave me alone" mode right now. And, there's that aesthetic of
demonstrating nothing, vs. demonstrating something that totally sucks,
like the Python logo. ;-)
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> I'm not selling you anything, let alone a language. I'm in strictly
> "R&D leave me alone" mode right now. And, there's that aesthetic of
> demonstrating nothing, vs. demonstrating something that totally sucks,
> like the Python logo. ;-)
IMHO, the "check back in a few days" (for a year now) sucks even
more ;)
Consider changing the page text to something like "nothing to see
here"?
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 22:13:14 -0500, Ulrich Hobelmann
<···········@web.de> wrote:
>Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>> I'm not selling you anything, let alone a language. I'm in strictly
>> "R&D leave me alone" mode right now. And, there's that aesthetic of
>> demonstrating nothing, vs. demonstrating something that totally sucks,
>> like the Python logo. ;-)
>
>IMHO, the "check back in a few days" (for a year now) sucks even
>more ;)
>
>Consider changing the page text to something like "nothing to see
>here"?
I think that's good advice, actually. Telling people to check back in
a few days when it isn't going to change disrespects the value of
their time.
But even better would be to put up a status page, or even a blog,
explaining where you are in the process. I mean, you can edit the
status page directly using SFTP in a decent editor, so how hard can it
be?
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
Adam Connor wrote:
>On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 22:13:14 -0500, Ulrich Hobelmann
><···········@web.de> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm not selling you anything, let alone a language. I'm in strictly
>>>"R&D leave me alone" mode right now. And, there's that aesthetic of
>>>demonstrating nothing, vs. demonstrating something that totally sucks,
>>>like the Python logo. ;-)
>>>
>>>
>>IMHO, the "check back in a few days" (for a year now) sucks even
>>more ;)
>>
>>Consider changing the page text to something like "nothing to see
>>here"?
>>
>>
>
>I think that's good advice, actually. Telling people to check back in
>a few days when it isn't going to change disrespects the value of
>their time.
>
>
Au contraire, mon capitain! It filters against people who take things
far too seriously. If you had my sense of humor, you'd actually think
it's funny, but I guess it's a poorly explained joke. Anyways, like I
really need to be contacted by anyone who thinks "the imposition of my
website upon their time" is a dealbreaker.
Let me give some of you guys a reality check on the way business really
works. Usenet mostly doesn't count. As much posturing as some of you
guys may put yourselves through, on the perceived belief that how you
publically conduct yourself really really matters, the bottom line is do
people come headhunting for you through Usenet? Maybe for you they
actually do. In my case the answer is no, they usually don't. They
come by other channels. In the rare case when someone does find me
through Usenet, it's usually some HR type that has no vested interest
whatsoever in the petty politics of all the miscreants and malcontents
of Usenet. Not that anyone here is a malcontent solely for criticizing
my awful website, but my point is again, Usenet doesn't matter. It's
full of people who think they're a lot more important than they really are.
I just got contacted by a Volt headhunter today, about some in-town C++
gig. I am laughing my ass off about this, because (1) I haven't waved
my resume under anyone's nose in 2 years, and they're referring to my
resume. So they must have my resume from 2 years ago the last time I
contacted them, during the height of the recession. (2) I run SeaFunc.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SeaFunc . I have no interest in C++
jobs. (3) Becuase the very same day this happens, somebody's
criticizing my website in comp.lang.lisp. Clearly, my website is
irrrelevant.
Aside from the nefarious internal practices of Volt, the way people get
jobs is going to local meetings of professional groups and doing the
business schmooze. People on Usenet deride me all the time for how
little I code and how much time I spend pondering 'Suit' issues (and not
doing it all that well, truth be told.) But it's that business schmooze
stuff that counts, guys. I don't quite hold with the old addage, "It's
not what you know, it's who you know." In other industries, yes, but
not high tech. Nevertheless, I feel very comfortable in pronouncing,
"It's 1/2 what you know and 1/2 who you know."
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
Taking risk where others will not.
Peter Seibel wrote:
> The book does not make a convincing case as to why CL should
succeed
> now, against those formidable and entrenched opponents [such as
> Java, C#, and VB].
>
> Luckily there have been enough 5-star reviews (thanks!) that his
> 3-star review doesn't actually change the average (after rounding).
> But his review is the most recent review which means it's the first
> review anyone will see. So if you've been meaning to write a positive
> review for Amazon, now would be an excellent time to post it, to push
> old Wes down the page a bit. Or if you've been meaning to post a
> negative review, now would be an excellent time to pile on and try
and
> push that rating below five stars.
I am not fond of CommonLisp and will always prefer Scheme/Bigloo. I am
also not one of your intented audience.
However, after reading the book review I am more than convinced by the
following (I know such similar things from reviewers gauging amateur
telescopes: you will not believe it how many amateur reviewers are
there without the slightest knowledge of modern physical optical
principles):
a)The book reviewer is a looser and braindamaged idiot who has not
grasped CommonLisp.
b) His biggest accomplishment in his life: driving a car and writing a
C++ program. No one will ever ask him about his oppinion.
c) A book review typically is meant to discuss the book. I have never
seen such a book review as the one you pointed to at Amazon which is
detracting that much from the topic at hand.
On the other side: you could learn from that review altogether. Comming
about with a history too detailed is no big win. I mean if I am going
to read a book about Fortran I am really not interested in insofar that
that particular Fortran is around since many thousand of years. As a
reader I will always get the feeling that I am reading about old and
outdated things.
And last but not least: your pointer to the book review reminds me at
the peer-review process in science. Such things happen all the time.
However, it could also be a good idea that you carefully adress the
criticism of the book reviewer. That is at least what I had expected
from you. I mean there is one negative critique - right? It is not a
good idea to approach a defending by means of calling positive
potential book reviewers.
So, the negative book reviewer at Amazon is right and CommonLisper
whine all the time instead of adressing criticism - right? No - right?
Yes - no?
Förster vom Silberwald
"F�rster vom Silberwald" <··········@hotmail.com> writes:
> And last but not least: your pointer to the book review reminds me
> at the peer-review process in science. Such things happen all the
> time. However, it could also be a good idea that you carefully
> adress the criticism of the book reviewer. That is at least what I
> had expected from you. I mean there is one negative critique -
> right? It is not a good idea to approach a defending by means of
> calling positive potential book reviewers.
I'm not sure it's my place to respond to a reviewer--I'm pretty happy
to let the book speak for itself. But for folks who might be put off
from reading the book by negative reviews, it's helpful to have
countervailing positive reviews.
> So, the negative book reviewer at Amazon is right and CommonLisper
> whine all the time instead of adressing criticism - right? No - right?
> Yes - no?
Hmmm. I'm not sure I'm whining. I'm just encouraging folks who
honestly think well of my book to say so in public. This is called
marketing, something Lispers are often accused of not understanding.
;-)
But to (breifly) address Wes's criticism--my book is not intended to
convince anyone that Common Lisp will overtake entrenched mainstream
languages such as Java, C#, or VB. My point is that Common Lisp *can*
be used in place of those languages to good effect and that
programmers who are willing to look beyond what's popular will be able
to take advantage of it. The opening paragraph--just as they taught us
in junior high--states my thesis:
If you think the greatest pleasure in programming comes from getting
a lot done with code that simply and clearly expresses your
intention, then programming in Common Lisp is likely to be about the
most fun you can have with a computer. You'll get more done, faster,
using it than you would using pretty much any other language.
Note that I make no promise that Common Lisp will take over the world;
just that you'll enjoy using it.
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Peter Seibel wrote:
> > So, the negative book reviewer at Amazon is right and CommonLisper
> > whine all the time instead of adressing criticism - right? No -
right?
> > Yes - no?
>
> Hmmm. I'm not sure I'm whining. I'm just encouraging folks who
> honestly think well of my book to say so in public. This is called
> marketing, something Lispers are often accused of not understanding.
> ;-)
Incidentally, why isn't Amazon offering a discount on your book, unlike
other new bestsellers in your category getting 34% off? (I've checked
with a couple IP addys.)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/books/3952
What seems to be happening is the book's very profitable but its
ranking suffers.
(Maybe Amazon thinks your book's demand is price insensitive, or it
doesn't tie in well to other products?)
"Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> Peter Seibel wrote:
>> > So, the negative book reviewer at Amazon is right and CommonLisper
>> > whine all the time instead of adressing criticism - right? No -
> right?
>> > Yes - no?
>>
>> Hmmm. I'm not sure I'm whining. I'm just encouraging folks who
>> honestly think well of my book to say so in public. This is called
>> marketing, something Lispers are often accused of not understanding.
>> ;-)
>
> Incidentally, why isn't Amazon offering a discount on your book,
> unlike other new bestsellers in your category getting 34% off? (I've
> checked with a couple IP addys.)
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/books/3952
>
> What seems to be happening is the book's very profitable but its
> ranking suffers.
>
> (Maybe Amazon thinks your book's demand is price insensitive, or it
> doesn't tie in well to other products?)
I think it's more determined by Apress than Amazon. That is, Apress
sets the price that they sell it to the world. And if that price is
not that much lower than the retail price (because Apress thinks this
is a fairly specialized book that the people who want it will be
willing to pay for and few other people will be interested in at all)
then Amazon doesn't discount it.
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 15:21:47 GMT, Peter Seibel <·····@gigamonkeys.com>
wrote:
>I think it's more determined by Apress than Amazon. That is, Apress
>sets the price that they sell it to the world. And if that price is
>not that much lower than the retail price (because Apress thinks this
>is a fairly specialized book that the people who want it will be
>willing to pay for and few other people will be interested in at all)
>then Amazon doesn't discount it.
Bookpool offers it at a 21% discount; I bought my copy from there.
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
Peter Seibel wrote:
> But his review is the most recent review which means it's the first
> review anyone will see.
He's giving a new meaning to the phrase "money talks". Boudville is the only
person to review a $2,250 book followed by a review of a $1,312.95 book on
the same day! :-)
alex goldman wrote:
> Peter Seibel wrote:
>>But his review is the most recent review which means it's the first
>>review anyone will see.
> He's giving a new meaning to the phrase "money talks". Boudville is the only
> person to review a $2,250 book followed by a review of a $1,312.95 book on
> the same day! :-)
Coupled with Alex Goldman's observation that Boudville has written
1489 reviews in 3 years raised the question whether he actually reads
the books before reviewing them. Can user complaints ban such people
from Amazon?
--
Jens Axel Søgaard
Jens Axel S�gaard wrote:
> alex goldman wrote:
>
>> Peter Seibel wrote:
>
>>>But his review is the most recent review which means it's the first
>>>review anyone will see.
>
>> He's giving a new meaning to the phrase "money talks". Boudville is the
>> only person to review a $2,250 book followed by a review of a $1,312.95
>> book on the same day! :-)
>
> Coupled with Alex Goldman's observation that Boudville has written
> 1489 reviews in 3 years
Hrvoje noticed it first. This whole discussion lead me to discover that
there is such a thing as a professional reviewer. Some of the top
amazon.com reviewers have nearly 10,000 reviews under their belt.
> raised the question whether he actually reads
> the books before reviewing them. Can user complaints ban such people
> from Amazon?
>
Jens Axel S�gaard <······@soegaard.net> writes:
[...]
> Coupled with Alex Goldman's observation that Boudville has written
> 1489 reviews in 3 years raised the question whether he actually
> reads the books before reviewing them.
Simply writing the things must take a fair bit of time. Presumably
you get faster with practice, but the ones I looked at seemed like
real reviews, and that's an average of over one a day. I suppose it's
a hobby. I suppose a book or so a day isn't impossible (although it
would presumably be expensive, unless you're very good or lucky at
selling them on), especially if you're not working for some reason.
I wonder if they're really written by some program that snarfs other
reviews and mangles them? (Written in VB, Java, or C#) presumably.)
> Can user complaints ban such people from Amazon?
I rather hope not. I think such oddities add flavour to things. It
seems to be possible to vote on reviewers.
Bruce Stephens wrote:
> Jens Axel Søgaard <······@soegaard.net> writes:
>>Coupled with Alex Goldman's observation that Boudville has written
>>1489 reviews in 3 years raised the question whether he actually
>>reads the books before reviewing them.
>
> Simply writing the things must take a fair bit of time. Presumably
> you get faster with practice, but the ones I looked at seemed like
> real reviews, and that's an average of over one a day. I suppose it's
> a hobby. I suppose a book or so a day isn't impossible (although it
> would presumably be expensive, unless you're very good or lucky at
> selling them on), especially if you're not working for some reason.
You have a point. It might even be possible that Amazon gives
books away to top reviewers to encourage reviewers.
--
Jens Axel Søgaard
Jens Axel S�gaard <······@soegaard.net> writes:
> Coupled with Alex Goldman's observation that Boudville has written
> 1489 reviews in 3 years raised the question whether he actually reads
> the books before reviewing them. Can user complaints ban such people
> from Amazon?
The easiest way seems the form at the bottom of the book info page, in
section "Suggestion Box".
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
"Peter Seibel" <·····@gigamonkeys.com> wrote in message ···················@gigamonkeys.com...
> So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
> Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
> of this post is taken from the title of his review. His criticism
> centers on this question:
>
> If Lisp is so powerful, why then has it consistently failed to hit
> the big time?
>
> and the failure of _Practical Common Lisp_ to answer it. Later he
> says:
>
> The book does not make a convincing case as to why CL should succeed
> now, against those formidable and entrenched opponents [such as
> Java, C#, and VB].
>
I wouldn't worry about it too much. You did a wonderful
job, it's a great introductory text. Until I read the review I had
assumed that the main thrust of a programming language textbook
was to give the reader the ability to write partway reasonable
code in the subject by the end of it and not to spend it teaching
people how to do marketing. Boudville appears to disagree,
go figure.
By the way, have you looked over his other reviews? Most of the
ones that get under four (his almost mandatory scoring) he either
complains about 'out-of-date' information or bad choice of title.
Strangely, a TEX manual rates a four but then again, who fails
Knuth? An Emacs book did ok to, but his major point is that Emacs
does HTML/XML, obviously a selling point.
--
Geoff
Peter Seibel wrote:
> So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
> Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
> of this post is taken from the title of his review. His criticism
> centers on this question:
Ooh schnapp, he Humbugged you in that review! "Humbug," he verily
exclaimed! You hath been judged of a vile and pernicious humbuggery.
Your lineage is now stained, "kind sir." Go forth into the town centre
and emblazon the scarlet letter H upon your visage, so the publick may
clearly countenance the particular species of buggery you seduce the
masses into.
You Socrates, you corrupter of youth!
> If Lisp is so powerful, why then has it consistently failed to hit
> the big time?
If this book had been entirely about answering sociological questions,
this would be a fine criticism. But it ain't, it's a TECHNICAL book.
Convincingly answering this question is a book in itself.
Assiduous reviewer Lee Carlson demonstrates you can read many books and
provide technical commentary. Not some hand-wavy journalism where he
concedes the book is good at what it does but criticizes/rates it for
questions outside its scope.
On Sat, 16 Apr 2005 03:34:15 GMT, Peter Seibel
<·····@gigamonkeys.com> wrote:
>So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
>Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
>of this post is taken from the title of his review. His criticism
>centers on this question:
>
> If Lisp is so powerful, why then has it consistently failed to hit
> the big time?
>
>and the failure of _Practical Common Lisp_ to answer it. Later he
>says:
>
> The book does not make a convincing case as to why CL should succeed
> now, against those formidable and entrenched opponents [such as
> Java, C#, and VB].
>
What is no issue. Reviews should review what book is about and how
is written, not about what book does not write about. For somebody
who wants to learn Lisp, this is excellent book, but I don't think
that this was the Author's intention to claim that Lisp is the
mainstream language or is teh best thing even invented or convert
abybody to Lisp. Those not converted will simply ignore the book.
There is funny perpetual war within computing community under the
banner "My ToolIs The Best". It is clear that not only Lisp
community is affected, but also those using C#, C++, Perl, Java, VB,
Ada, Eiffel, Fortran.... long list could continue.
A.L.
Peter Seibel wrote:
> So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
> Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
> of this post is taken from the title of his review. His criticism
> centers on this question:
>
> If Lisp is so powerful, why then has it consistently failed to hit
> the big time?
>
> and the failure of _Practical Common Lisp_ to answer it. Later he
> says:
>
> The book does not make a convincing case as to why CL should succeed
> now, against those formidable and entrenched opponents [such as
> Java, C#, and VB].
>
Guys who are able to put "formidable" and BASIC in the same sentence,
will never rate favorably any Lisp book. Given this, I would consider
three stars a good rating.
-- Hrvoje
Peter Seibel <·····@gigamonkeys.com> writes:
> So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
> Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
> of this post is taken from the title of his review.
...
> [1] <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590592395/>
I notice that most people don't find his review helpful.
--
An ideal world is left as an excercise to the reader.
--- Paul Graham, On Lisp 8.1
No excuses. No apologies. Just do it.
--- Erik Naggum
David Steuber <·····@david-steuber.com> writes:
> Peter Seibel <·····@gigamonkeys.com> writes:
>
> > So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
> > Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
> > of this post is taken from the title of his review.
> ...
> > [1] <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590592395/>
>
> I notice that most people don't find his review helpful.
Ofcourse this review is not helpfull, since it says zich about its content
Cor
--
To really make a mess of things one should use a computer
Peter Seibel <·····@gigamonkeys.com> writes:
> So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
> Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
[...]
> [1] <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590592395/>
This "review" immediately reminded me of a famous quote by
H. L. Mencken: "Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere,
may be happy."
Maybe Mr. Boudville, and the others who have been bashing Lisp for
decades, are frightened at the idea that someone is still happy with
the language. So he doesn't review your book, but uses it as an
excuse to grind his personal axe on Lisp.
My advice: just ignore it. Only the most superficial potential
readers will come away from your book because of such a review.
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
Peter Seibel wrote:
> So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
> Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
> of this post is taken from the title of his review. His criticism
> centers on this question:
I've taken a more thorough look at Wes Boudville and his reviews. He is
clocking 1489 reviews (which might change in the time it takes me to
write this :-). His first was written 25th April 2002, 3 years ago,
which would give him an incredible capacity of almost two books a day.
Compared to him, I must be somewhere between a vegetable and a worm. It
takes me anywhere between a month to three months to read and work
through examples in a reasonable CS book.
Anyway, if you check SICP you will find 54 one star reviews--consider
yourself lucky :-)
-- Hrvoje
Hrvoje Blazevic wrote:
> I've taken a more thorough look at Wes Boudville and his reviews. He is
> clocking 1489 reviews (which might change in the time it takes me to
> write this :-). His first was written 25th April 2002, 3 years ago,
> which would give him an incredible capacity of almost two books a day.
I didn't go that far. But since April 16, 2004, he reviewed about 120 books,
i.e. a book every three days. That's doable, although I've never met anyone
so devoted to reading. And if you are not a speed-reader, reading so much
should take you about 8 hours a day.
alex goldman wrote:
> Hrvoje Blazevic wrote:
>
>> I've taken a more thorough look at Wes Boudville and his reviews. He is
>> clocking 1489 reviews (which might change in the time it takes me to
>> write this :-). His first was written 25th April 2002, 3 years ago,
>> which would give him an incredible capacity of almost two books a day.
>
> I didn't go that far. But since April 16, 2004, he reviewed about 120
> books, i.e. a book every three days. That's doable, although I've never
> met anyone so devoted to reading. And if you are not a speed-reader,
> reading so much should take you about 8 hours a day.
Sorry, made a mistake. I was looking at PAGES, not number of reviews. This
guy truly is surreal. Unless he reads very fast, he does so 80 hours a day.
alex goldman <·····@spamm.er> writes:
> Hrvoje Blazevic wrote:
>
>> I've taken a more thorough look at Wes Boudville and his reviews. He is
>> clocking 1489 reviews (which might change in the time it takes me to
[...]
> I didn't go that far. But since April 16, 2004, he reviewed about 120 books,
> i.e. a book every three days. That's doable, although I've never met anyone
> so devoted to reading. And if you are not a speed-reader, reading so much
> should take you about 8 hours a day.
Not to mention the cots of purchasing all those books. And, at this
reading speed, he does a good shake at Amazon's shipping procedures.
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:
> Not to mention the cots of purchasing all those books. And, at this
^^^^
Should have been "cost", of course.
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
According to Hrvoje Blazevic <······@despammed.com>:
> I've taken a more thorough look at Wes Boudville and his reviews. He is
> clocking 1489 reviews (which might change in the time it takes me to
> write this :-). His first was written 25th April 2002, 3 years ago,
> which would give him an incredible capacity of almost two books a day.
Maybe he is a Lisp program.
Does anyone have a Lisp program to make anagrams of his name?
--
Ng Pheng Siong <····@netmemetic.com>
http://sandbox.rulemaker.net/ngps -+- M2Crypto, ZServerSSL for Zope, Blog
http://www.sqlcrypt.com -+- Transparent AES Encryption for SQLite
Peter Seibel wrote:
> So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
> Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
> of this post is taken from the title of his review.
You have already used this list to plug your book quite frequently.
Your book looks good. I have no problem with that. Indeed, I even
contemplate using it at the University. However, that at the first sign
of "trouble" you call on others to help you with your Amazon ranking I
find, frankly, a little disturbing. It's a BOOK! Not everybody will
love it not matter what the topic is. This is the nature of reviewing.
Whining in public about ONE? bad review is likely to do more damage to
your book than that review itself.
"Alexander Repenning" <·····@cs.colorado.edu> wrote in message
····························@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Peter Seibel wrote:
>> So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
>> Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
>> of this post is taken from the title of his review.
>
> You have already used this list to plug your book quite frequently.
> Your book looks good. I have no problem with that. Indeed, I even
> contemplate using it at the University. However, that at the first sign
> of "trouble" you call on others to help you with your Amazon ranking I
> find, frankly, a little disturbing. It's a BOOK! Not everybody will
> love it not matter what the topic is. This is the nature of reviewing.
> Whining in public about ONE? bad review is likely to do more damage to
> your book than that review itself.
Oh, relax. No parent likes to hear their kid called goofy by anyone. It is
just a book to you, but it is a couple of years of Peter's life. He's a
proud father of a creative progeny, let him fuss! Besides, the review cited
was more a comment on lisp than his book...
--
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")
"Coby Beck" <·····@mercury.bc.ca> writes:
> "Alexander Repenning" <·····@cs.colorado.edu> wrote in message
> ····························@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>>
>> Peter Seibel wrote:
>>> So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review
>>> on Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The
>>> subject of this post is taken from the title of his review.
>>
>> You have already used this list to plug your book quite frequently.
>> Your book looks good. I have no problem with that. Indeed, I even
>> contemplate using it at the University. However, that at the first
>> sign of "trouble" you call on others to help you with your Amazon
>> ranking I find, frankly, a little disturbing. It's a BOOK! Not
>> everybody will love it not matter what the topic is. This is the
>> nature of reviewing. Whining in public about ONE? bad review is
>> likely to do more damage to your book than that review itself.
>
> Oh, relax. No parent likes to hear their kid called goofy by anyone.
> It is just a book to you, but it is a couple of years of Peter's
> life. He's a proud father of a creative progeny, let him fuss!
> Besides, the review cited was more a comment on lisp than his
> book...
Thanks for understanding. That last bit--that the review was more
about Lisp than the book--was indeed the main reason I posted about
it. Which is not to say I was going to be sad if some c.l.l'ers
decided to defend Lisp's honor by writing 5-star reviews of my book.
;-)
That said, I'm aware that c.l.l. is not a forum solely for marketing
Lisp books so I'll ease up--the book's out there and it'll fly, or
not, on its own. Thanks again to all the c.l.l'ers who gave me help
and support both during the writing and in the past week since it hit
the shelves.
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Frankly, I'm enjoying this bit of insight.
We c.l.l'ers got to watch (and participate) as the book grew.
Now we are getting to see the results and new insights into the business of
publishing technical books.
I vote to keep seeing updates on this list.
1 Nay, 2 Yay thus far.
It's not like lisp books get published every week. We're not going to be
drowned in marketing...
pt
Peter Seibel <·····@gigamonkeys.com> writes:
> Thanks for understanding. That last bit--that the review was more
> about Lisp than the book--was indeed the main reason I posted about
> it. Which is not to say I was going to be sad if some c.l.l'ers
> decided to defend Lisp's honor by writing 5-star reviews of my book.
> ;-)
Did you think that the most actively bashed programming language in
the history of computing in this universe would get only glowing
reviews at Amazon? :)
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:
> Peter Seibel <·····@gigamonkeys.com> writes:
>
>> Thanks for understanding. That last bit--that the review was more
>> about Lisp than the book--was indeed the main reason I posted about
>> it. Which is not to say I was going to be sad if some c.l.l'ers
>> decided to defend Lisp's honor by writing 5-star reviews of my book.
>> ;-)
>
> Did you think that the most actively bashed programming language in
> the history of computing in this universe would get only glowing
> reviews at Amazon? :)
Heh. I certainly did not. In fact this review was about what I
expected. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to keep my average up.
;-)
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote:
> Peter Seibel <·····@gigamonkeys.com> writes:
>> Thanks for understanding. That last bit--that the review was more
>> about Lisp than the book--was indeed the main reason I posted about
>> it. Which is not to say I was going to be sad if some c.l.l'ers
>> decided to defend Lisp's honor by writing 5-star reviews of my book.
>> ;-)
>
> Did you think that the most actively bashed programming language in
> the history of computing in this universe would get only glowing
> reviews at Amazon? :)
That language doesn't, either:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0672314533/qid=1113749756/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/103-7085871-3199837?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
--
Karl A. Krueger <········@example.edu> { s/example/whoi/ }
Karl A. Krueger wrote:
>>Did you think that the most actively bashed programming language in
>>the history of computing in this universe would get only glowing
>>reviews at Amazon? :)
>
>
> That language doesn't, either:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0672314533/qid=1113749756/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/103-7085871-3199837?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
>
"I am 16 years old. Several of my family members are programmers,
most of them use COBOL. With this book, and a little help from my
family I am learning COBOL."
Poor guy and family. But seriously, a 16-year-old should rather
hack assembly, Lisp, or C, not learn COBOL! He's going to be an
accountant.
Well, in fact he should go out with girls, but we weren't all that
lucky ;)
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Paolo Amoroso wrote:
> Did you think that the most actively bashed programming language in
> the history of computing in this universe
Hm.. Not sure that that's lisp. Maybe the most actively yet
unjustifiably bashed. After all, VB exists.
David Golden wrote:
> Paolo Amoroso wrote:
>
>> Did you think that the most actively bashed programming language in
>> the history of computing in this universe
>
>
> Hm.. Not sure that that's lisp. Maybe the most actively yet
> unjustifiably bashed. After all, VB exists.
google:"lisp sucks"
Results 1 - 10 of about 205 for "lisp sucks". (0.07 seconds)
google:"VB sucks"
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,590 for "VB sucks". (0.15 seconds)
heh. but hey,
google:"C sucks"
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,560 for "C sucks". (0.94 seconds)
of course,
google:"SML/NJ sucks"
Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "SML/NJ sucks". (0.37 seconds)
google:"Haskell sucks"
Results 1 - 9 of about 19 for "Haskell sucks". (0.89 seconds)
>google:"lisp sucks" ---> 205
>google:"VB sucks" --->1,590
>google:"C sucks" ---> 2,560
Those are all small time. fortran gets 20,000 votes, and java gets...
699,000!
I am surprised that C beat VB though... I really thought that C was a
decent language for what it does, and, like lisp, it doesn't get enough
publicity to be used in situations that it isn't needed for.
Personally, I expected VB to climb to the top of this list...
>>google:"lisp sucks" ---> 205
>>google:"VB sucks" --->1,590
>>google:"C sucks" ---> 2,560
>Those are all small time. fortran gets 20,000 votes, and java gets...
>699,000!
fortran 132, java 4870. Forgot the quotes. Java is still top though.
Eric Lavigne wrote:
>>google:"lisp sucks" ---> 205
>>google:"VB sucks" --->1,590
>>google:"C sucks" ---> 2,560
>
> Those are all small time. fortran gets 20,000 votes, and java gets...
> 699,000!
>
Did you leave out the double quotes?
"Java sucks" -> 4780
"fortran sucks" -> 132
> I expected VB to climb to the top of this list...
Well, the methodology isn't perfect
"VB makes baby jesus cry" -> 1
"lisp makes baby jesus cry" -> 0
"Java makes baby jesus cry" -> 3
David Golden <············@oceanfree.net> writes:
> Eric Lavigne wrote:
>
> >>google:"lisp sucks" ---> 205
> >>google:"VB sucks" --->1,590
> >>google:"C sucks" ---> 2,560
> >
> > Those are all small time. fortran gets 20,000 votes, and java gets...
> > 699,000!
> >
> Did you leave out the double quotes?
> "Java sucks" -> 4780
> "fortran sucks" -> 132
>
> > I expected VB to climb to the top of this list...
>
> Well, the methodology isn't perfect
> "VB makes baby jesus cry" -> 1
> "lisp makes baby jesus cry" -> 0
> "Java makes baby jesus cry" -> 3
"God programs in Lisp" -> 4
"God programs in Java" -> 0
"God programs in VB" -> 0
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Grace personified,
I leap into the window.
I meant to do that.
Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
> "God programs in Lisp" -> 4
> "God programs in Java" -> 0
> "God programs in VB" -> 0
I think two are technically duplicates, which makes it 2.
But the context of the first one is cool:
"God programs in Lisp. When things are working right, he (she
it?) sends the code to hell where sinners are forced to translate
God's code into C++, Tcl, Java, and other horrible computational
sins."
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
On 17 Apr 2005 08:34:15 -0700, "Eric Lavigne" <············@gmail.com>
wrote:
>>google:"lisp sucks" ---> 205
>>google:"VB sucks" --->1,590
>>google:"C sucks" ---> 2,560
>
>Those are all small time. fortran gets 20,000 votes, and java gets...
>699,000!
>
>I am surprised that C beat VB though... I really thought that C was a
>decent language for what it does, and, like lisp, it doesn't get enough
>publicity to be used in situations that it isn't needed for.
>Personally, I expected VB to climb to the top of this list...
Heh, "java sucks" got 750,000 when I did it. First link was a
oldie-but-goodie by Jamie Zawinski.
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
Peter Seibel wrote:
> Thanks for understanding. That last bit--that the review was more
> about Lisp than the book [...]
While I agree that the review is not very insightful, what one person is
writing, thousands are thinking. You might want to try to address his
concerns in future iterations of the book, if they are to come.
BTW, I was the first to vote his review as helpful. The score went from 0:12
to 1:12. The way the whole c.l.l ganged up on him on your command, just
didn't feel right. Sorry.
"alex goldman" <·····@spamm.er> wrote in message
·······················@yahoo.com...
> Peter Seibel wrote:
>
>> Thanks for understanding. That last bit--that the review was more
>> about Lisp than the book [...]
>
> While I agree that the review is not very insightful
[...]
> I was the first to vote his review as helpful.
That is not an act of high integrity. Unless you have reason to believe the
12 voting against it are lying, your lying vote is not "justice", nor will
it help anyone unaware of the behind-the-scenes politics.
There is no evil going on here that needs a crusader to combat it!
--
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")
Coby Beck wrote:
> "alex goldman" <·····@spamm.er> wrote in message
> ·······················@yahoo.com...
>> Peter Seibel wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for understanding. That last bit--that the review was more
>>> about Lisp than the book [...]
>>
>> While I agree that the review is not very insightful
> [...]
>> I was the first to vote his review as helpful.
There is a difference between /helpful/ and /insighful/
> That is not an act of high integrity. Unless you have reason to believe
> the 12 voting against it are lying, your lying vote is not "justice", nor
> will it help anyone unaware of the behind-the-scenes politics.
>
> There is no evil going on here that needs a crusader to combat it!
Votes are determined by the selection of voters. One could go to
comp.lang.python, our nemesis, and many of them would find the review
"helpful".
"alex goldman" <·····@spamm.er> wrote in message
·······················@yahoo.com...
> Coby Beck wrote:
>> That is not an act of high integrity. Unless you have reason to believe
>> the 12 voting against it are lying, your lying vote is not "justice", nor
>> will it help anyone unaware of the behind-the-scenes politics.
>>
>> There is no evil going on here that needs a crusader to combat it!
>
> Votes are determined by the selection of voters. One could go to
> comp.lang.python, our nemesis, and many of them would find the review
> "helpful".
If someone comse from another camp with no real interest in learning
anything, reads one bad review and thinks "thought so" to himself and goes
away, it is rather difficult to see how one could say this bad review helped
him in any way.
Nor is reviewing a book supposed to be a rating of your personal interest in
the subject. How helpful am I being if I hate country music and write a
whole bunch of reviews of Shania Twain saying, "yup, its country, this album
sucks". How helpful is that to anyone?
The apparent fact remains that you cast a vote you don't really believe in
to "compensate" for something. I think it is an overreaction. But not
worth this much bother either, I will drop the subject now I think.
--
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")
Coby Beck wrote:
>> Votes are determined by the selection of voters. One could go to
>> comp.lang.python, our nemesis, and many of them would find the review
>> "helpful".
>
> If someone comse from another camp with no real interest in learning
> anything, reads one bad review and thinks "thought so" to himself and goes
> away, it is rather difficult to see how one could say this bad review
> helped him in any way.
The question Amazon asks is "was this review helpful to YOU?".
But feel free to write a letter to Amazon and demand that they discount my
vote :-)
> Nor is reviewing a book supposed to be a rating of your personal interest
> in
> the subject. How helpful am I being if I hate country music and write a
> whole bunch of reviews of Shania Twain saying, "yup, its country, this
> album
> sucks". How helpful is that to anyone?
You must be from Canada :-) Once you've had a Gansta Rappa live next door to
you and take several months to get evicted, you'll start to /love/ country.
"alex goldman" <·····@spamm.er> wrote in message
·······················@yahoo.com...
> Coby Beck wrote:
>> Nor is reviewing a book supposed to be a rating of your personal interest
>> in
>> the subject. How helpful am I being if I hate country music and write a
>> whole bunch of reviews of Shania Twain saying, "yup, its country, this
>> album
>> sucks". How helpful is that to anyone?
>
> You must be from Canada :-) Once you've had a Gansta Rappa live next door
> to
> you and take several months to get evicted, you'll start to /love/
> country.
Yes, I am...no thanks, I'll skip the gansta rappa next door neighbor thanks!
BTW, it was an example chosen for easy understanding, I happen to like
Shania Twain quite a bit...but she is a special kind of country!
--
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")
"Alexander Repenning" <·····@cs.colorado.edu> wrote in
>
> Whining in public about ONE? bad review is likely to do more damage to
> your book than that review itself.
Why would there be any damage? 'Whining' in this forum is preaching to
the choir. And I don't agree that it's whining to look after Lisp's
marketing interests.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Peter Seibel wrote:
> So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
> Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
> of this post is taken from the title of his review. His criticism
> centers on this question:
>
> If Lisp is so powerful, why then has it consistently failed to hit
> the big time?
>
> and the failure of _Practical Common Lisp_ to answer it. Later he
> says:
>
> The book does not make a convincing case as to why CL should succeed
> now, against those formidable and entrenched opponents [such as
> Java, C#, and VB].
>
> Luckily there have been enough 5-star reviews (thanks!) that his
> 3-star review doesn't actually change the average (after rounding).
> But his review is the most recent review which means it's the first
> review anyone will see.
I detect "over-protective parent syndrome". Your imagined reader will see:
"It provides a good explanation of Common Lisp. And, yes, this language
is probably the most powerful language generally available to anyone
today. In fact, in Lisp's almost 50 year history, this has generally
been true. Most Lisp proponents will readily tell you this, as does the
book. Many knowledgeable Lisp detractors will also agree."
Heady stuff, if you ask me. Anyone merely curious about Lisp will only
be more so after reading that kind of stuff.
And review counts aside, the review is knowledgable enough to hold its
own. ie, He makes the same dumb mistakes other Lispophobes make. I see
no need to attack the messenger as others have done in follow-ups.
kenny
--
Cells? Cello? Cells-Gtk?: http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
"Doctor, I wrestled with reality for forty years, and I am happy to
state that I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
Peter Seibel <·····@gigamonkeys.com> writes:
> So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
> Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
By the way, speaking of positive things: any feedback from Apress?
Are they happy with the early sales and customer reaction? Is this
close to what they expected?
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:
> Peter Seibel <·····@gigamonkeys.com> writes:
>
>> So, _Practical Common Lisp_ has received its first negative review on
>> Amazon[1] from Wes Boudville, an Amazon Top 50 Reviewer. The subject
>
> By the way, speaking of positive things: any feedback from Apress?
> Are they happy with the early sales and customer reaction? Is this
> close to what they expected?
They seem pleased. Aparently they've already sold (to distributors and
booksellers) half the print run (and the print run was actually
relatively large since they figured the book wouldn't become obsolete
in six months the way many tech books do). However that doesn't really
say anything about the "sell through" of copies to individuals. I
think according to Bookscan, which measures sales at the big online
and brick-and-mortar sellers, the book was in the top 500 computer
books by sales last week and (excluding some of the "Dummies" books)
in or near the top 10 for programming books. Of course sales have
slowed down a bit after the pent-up demand was satisfied, but looking
to the Amazon Sales Rank, it's still under 5,000 which--as I
understand it--is pretty respectable.
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:
> By the way, speaking of positive things: any feedback from Apress?
> Are they happy with the early sales and customer reaction? Is this
> close to what they expected?
Gary Cornell seems pleased about the Amazon ratings:
http://blogs.apress.com/archives/000492.php?author=gary_cornell