I left this as a guestbook entry at a Mr. Rainer Joswig's site, and
though I know it sounds a little naive and "cheerleady," I thought I'd
like to post it here. Any gratuitous comments about what a complete
n00b I am will be greatly appreciated, of course:
Hi there. Why am I here? Well, about a year ago I began studying
programming on my own as a private interest. I started out playing
around with a beginners' online course in C (Thank you Steve Summit!),
then came a bit of Perl (a *very* brief bit), and after working through
a couple of books on Python (_How to Think Like a Computer Scientist_
and _A Byte of Python_), I've come to Lisp (I'm currently working
through Peter Seibel's book). It is amazing, and for me represents a
difference in kind from any other language I've seen so far. While I am
pretty ignorant of the "state of the art" in the world of computation,
I am very interested in Lisp Machines and the idea that (if I
understand correctly) they embodied: that the entire system's
capability is available to the user, that every function written for
the operating system is also available in one's own environment. That
sounds light years ahead of doing everything with C and flat text
files, which seems analogous to doing things by hand. I work as a
Language Tutor for students with Dyslexia, with no formal training
whatsoever in Computer Science, so I have a lot of difficulty
understanding what is so frightening about the world of Lisp, Scheme,
et al (That isn't to say that I know all there is to know, of course).
I like to think of myself as a bright enough guy, but the truth is that
there isn't anything that extraordinary about my intellect, and I'm
sure that the average programmer is at least as smart as I am (and sure
knows a lot more). I think I begin to understand Steve Yegge when he
writes about the way that languages are perceived as religions, since I
can't really understand why anyone who claims to have a serious
interest in computers and programming wouldn't want to visit the ideas
that are unique to Lisp. Anyway, that's probably enough rambling for a
guestbook entry...
From: Pierpaolo BERNARDI
Subject: Re: Lisp for the Layperson
Date:
Message-ID: <op.tdyqv8cvxbm8ci@eraora>
On Tue, 08 Aug 2006 00:50:54 +0200, Rich Loveland <················@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm sure that the average programmer is at least as smart as I am (and sure
> knows a lot more).
You haven't met many programmers, have you?
The average programmer has no curiosity about c.s. For them
programming is just a job, like frying potatoes or selling
used cars.
In the places where the average programmers work, technical
decisions are made by suits who know even less than the
programmers. If their manager told them the next project has
to be done in intercal they wouldn't care.
The programmers that you see in usenet, if even only because
they spend some of their time arguing about technical issues,
are very very far from the average.
(Then there are the ones below the average... 8^)
P.
--
Anything below this line is being added by the newsserver
Pierpaolo BERNARDI wrote:
>
> The average programmer has no curiosity about c.s. For them
> programming is just a job, like frying potatoes or selling
> used cars.
>
That's so true, but so very sad. I should NOT feel embarrassed for
talking about technical stuff at my programming job, but I frequently
do. What a crazy world. I could go for some french fries now too.
-Ben
Ben wrote:
> Pierpaolo BERNARDI wrote:
> >
> > The average programmer has no curiosity about c.s. For them
> > programming is just a job, like frying potatoes or selling
> > used cars.
> >
>
> That's so true, but so very sad. I should NOT feel embarrassed for
> talking about technical stuff at my programming job, but I frequently
> do. What a crazy world. I could go for some french fries now too.
Above average programmers are perfectly capable of getting a better job
with better people. So unless you've just entered the workforce and
didn't know any better, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
"Pierpaolo BERNARDI" <·········@secondbox.net> writes:
> In the places where the average programmers work, technical
> decisions are made by suits who know even less than the
> programmers. If their manager told them the next project has
> to be done in intercal they wouldn't care.
I don't know about that. Does Eclipse have a nice Intercal plug-in?
--
The lithobraker. Zero distance stops at any speed.
This post uses 100% post consumer electrons and 100% virgin photons.
At 2.6 miles per minute, you don't really have time to get bored.
--- Pete Roehling on rec.motorcycles
I would agree that most programmers think of their jobs as just that, a
job. They are not fascinated by the complexities and intricacies of
programming.
Also, a lot of people have a very hard time wrapping their heads around
the idea of a computer language to begin with. Computer languages are
a completely arbitrary set of language rules that are created to flip a
bunch of switches inside of a processor. Once you can suspend the
belief that there is only one grammar and syntax for writing something,
you can approach different computer languages with greater ease. You
start to not "see" the syntax, and see the underlying code instead.
Also, if you are grasping the concepts behind a lisp machines vs
current operating systems after only a year of programming as a hobby.
You might have a gift for these things.
On 2006-08-10 10:35:19 +0100, "gringo" <···········@gmail.com> said:
> I would agree that most programmers think of their jobs as just that, a
> job. They are not fascinated by the complexities and intricacies of
> programming.
You might also want to distinguish between "pay-the-bills" jobs
and whatever else one fancies doing.
As a "wage-slave" the only commodity I can exchange is the use
of my time, which I have decided to "waste" on a mind-numbing
Java day job that brings in a more than decent income, while
spending evenings and week-ends (the time I do not sell) on
personal endehavours, which, quite often, involve CL :-)
--
JFB