Re: Interesting essay

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 2:06 PM, Martin Guy <martinwguy@gmail.com> wrote:
> Of course, it may still be good cause for reflection, to see whether
> your own practical experience matches the things he describes.  Just
> don't take any of it as true.

Oh, I never read essays for the facts ;)   (The Haskell reference
seemed dubious even to me)

His central argument that if a language is sufficiently flexible and
powerful, it acts as a magnet for a certain kind of programmer. Hard
things are sufficiently easy that a talented individual can do 80%
implementations on their own. They scratch the personal itch, but the
motivation for doing the really hard bits (making the solution truly
available and open to others to work on) is lacking. (Or perhaps it
isn't for lack of trying: they end up trying to convince other
talented individuals that they must embrace this solution, but
meanwhile those individuals are busy doing their own implementations.)
 It is not primarily a technical problem anymore.

Stated as baldly as this, it comes across as an over-generalization.
For one thing, the Lua community does not have the same kind of holy
mission thinking that Lispers seem prone to. However, we have a lot of
cats and not enough wolves.

steve d.