[asciilifeform]

> Surely if lisp makes a programmer N times more efficient then it would be easy to study scientifically. Have there been any studies comparing productivity?

I began to write a reply to your question, but decided that it deserved its own post:

http://www.loper-os.org/?p=85

[plinkplonk]

"I began to write a reply to your question, but decided that it deserved its own post"

That isn't really a reply to the question posed. Just more ranting and raving.

Sample: "Yes, my dear bean counters, you can measure productivity. I would no more ask you to stop in your attempts at its measurement than I would ask mosquitoes to stop sucking blood. You can measure productivity – even of Lisp; even of political philosophies. You will simply need to secure a very large bag of beans – one deep enough to hold a bean for every twist and turn of a century of tinkering, politicking, and everything else associated with the messy business of successfully thinking new thoughts."

The best interpretation of this drivel is that you want people to accept your claims of superior productivity just on your say so but not ask for any evidence because asking you back up your unsubstantiated claims of superiority would be "bean counting".

Forget the scientific studies. There is another kind of "evidence" in programming - write code that is evidently superior. The best way to show that (say) Linux is an "inferior" operating system is to build one better. Not talk about making one sometime in the misty future. Build. Then talk.

Endless rants aren't as good. As silentbicycle says elsewhere

"I just take issue with how some particularly vocal Lispers have been sitting on the sidelines going, "Our language is THE BEST LANGUAGE" for decades. ("Sick of being a blub programmer and working in Blub? Try our Language For Smart People.") They're so used to being smug because their language was thirty years ahead of its time, fifty years ago."

[camccann]

The best interpretation of this drivel is that you want people to accept your claims of superior productivity just on your say so but not ask for any evidence because asking you back up your unsubstantiated claims of superiority would be "bean counting".

The obvious interpretation is that he's saying something like "the usual definition of productivity is flawed and myopic, and gets in the way of realizing the power of Lisp". The paragraph you quoted (implied as a representative sample) is indeed pretty much content-free, because it was a gratuitous flourish at the end.

Of course there is indeed a lot of assertion couched in flowery language there, but that's not the same as "because I say so and if you disagree you're a poopyhead" which is what you seem to have gotten from it. You also seemed to miss the part where he argued that multiple major concepts in modern software originated on the Lisp Machine, which would seem to more than qualify as "building something better".

I'm assuming you're not naive enough to think that "better" equates to "successful", which is another issue entirely.

[plinkplonk]

"The obvious interpretation is that he's saying something like "the usual definition of productivity is flawed and myopic, and gets in the way of realizing the power of Lisp". "

Just the fact of him sayng something like that doesn't make it true. More logic, supporting arguments and evidence is called for to support such claims. Besides He isn't offering any (lucid) alternative definition. Just rant after rant , over a period of years. Which makes the whole post (and link to it on HN) very content free (imo, feel free to disagree and vote accordingly).

Yes , sure Lisp is cool. There I said it. But hey Linux is cool too. So is C. So are a lot of things.

[wendroid]

> The best way to show that (say) Linux is an "inferior" operating system is to build one better.

One of the most valued metrics of "better" is "how does it fit into the ecosystem". Plan 9 is clearly superior to Linux. It has cleaner interfaces, one person can understand it, lot's of things are unified that were disparate etc. etc. Everyone who uses both extensively berates Linux at every turn.

Mention it in more general spaces as HN, Reddit, Slashdot etc. and you will be told it is a failure, flop, doesn't have program X so it's useless, etc. etc.

Popularity means nothing

http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

The previous winners of the "Language of the Year" award are shown below.

    Year	Winner
    2008 	C
    2007 	Python
    2006 	Ruby
    2005 	Java
    2004 	PHP
    2003 	C++

[plinkplonk]

"Plan 9 is clearly superior to Linux. It has cleaner interfaces, one person can understand it, lot's of things are unified that were disparate etc. etc. "

I have no argument with this,

"Everyone who uses both extensively berates Linux at every turn."

I seriously doubt this. Please provide any evidence you have.

If the makers of plan 9 were to say "Linux is crap" at least they have the credibility to say so. It is noteworthy that they would never say something so stupid. Linux (and yes Plan 9) aren't the acme of perfection. But neither are the "lisp os" es. Raising ancient lisp systems to some unreachable pedestal of perfection , especially by people who've never seen or used on and have just read about them, is dubious

This is just a blogger with lots of crummy blog posts and no code. At best he is incoherent and at worst deluded.

To repeat my point was not that Linux is the best OS ever. But for me (or anyone else) to go around screaming that everything that is popular is all delusion is pointless (and strictly imo) shouldn't be paid any attention.

"The previous winners of the "Language of the Year" award are shown below.

    Year	Winner
    2008 	C
    2007 	Python
    2006 	Ruby
    2005 	Java
    2004 	PHP
    2003 	C++"

And the point is? Most of them are fine languages and worthy of "langauge of the year" at least when measured in terms of popularity.

"Popularity means nothing"

Popularity is not everything but it sure isn't "nothing" either.

[wendroid]

> Please provide any evidence you have.

Only the power of my own ear at Plan9 conferences from people who know a damn sight more about such things than I. I could pull various mailing list posts out, such as the big argument of Rob Pike with Linus but what's the point.

> If the makers of plan 9 were to say "Linux is crap" at least they have the credibility to say so. It is noteworthy that they would never say something so stupid.

From the Plan9 fortune file : "Linux: written by amateurs for amateurs." - D. Presotto

> And the point is?

That the technical merit of the language doesn't determine it's popularity. So choosing what is the "better language" is rendered pointless.

>Popularity is not everything but it sure isn't "nothing" either.

Yes, I read that back after the edit time ran out and wanted to change it. Popularity and userbase isn't the correct metric for quality.

[plinkplonk]

""Linux: written by amateurs for amateurs." - D. Presotto"

This is (in a strict sense) true and is not the same as "linux is crap". Linus was certainly an amateur when he wrote the first version of the kernel in the sense that was the first OS kernel he wrote) and many people who contribute are not tenured professors(or whatever your definition of "professional" happens to be). The fact remains that an "amateur" teenager in Finland ran rings around the "professionals".

"That the technical merit of the language doesn't determine it's popularity. So choosing what is the "better language" is rendered pointless."

I agree. But that is the point isn't it? You can't choose "the better language" anyway. The mythical Lisp OS isn't really "better" either unless you've made up your mind up front. So why go on and on for years (the blogger not you)about "everything popular is crap and Lisp is the ultimate leet cool thing forever and forever and anyone who doesn't accept this is an idiot" instead of focussing on actually writing some code?

[wendroid]

We are in agreement, mostly :).

I don't know which professionals rings around were run, but again, who cares, that's just conjecture, the conjuncture was between a need for a free Unix, BSD sat in court, the GPL, LAMP. The result was the cartesian product that remains today.

In the world of worse is better, Plan9 wasn't bad enough !

[trapper]

I refer you to:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1016762

What's wrong with that as evidence for lisps superiority?

[jules]

What's wrong is that they measured the performance of Lisp programmers vs Java/C++ programmers. This is fine but you're not comparing the merits of the programming language. The Lisp programmers would win even if they were forced to program in Java.