[chris_armstrong]

The author spends a lot time describing programming as a solitary activity (discovery, analysis) using like metaphors (poets, explorers, etc) and draws his conclusions thus, emphasizing the malleability of LISPs and Smalltalk as ideal for this task.

I think the author examining the fads of agile or XP would draw quite opposite conclusions if they observed programming as a social activity, building a shared knowledge and understanding that is constantly refined before it is "abandoned" as a piece of software.

[jcynix]

The author is Richard P. Gabriel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_P._Gabriel and he had a rather long and impressive career in software.

[lisper]

It is also worth noting that Gabriel wrote this in 2003. At that time, programming was a much more solitary activity than it is today. Git would not exist for another two years.

[cbrozefsky]

But we had several distributed version control systems, and collaboration online was rather mature

WRT the earlier comment, I don’t see anything in RPGs writing that assumes solitary development

[lisper]

> we had several distributed version control systems

None that worked well. There is a reason Git took over this space. Git is to 2005-era version control systems what Google was to Ask Jeeves and Alta Vista.

> and collaboration online was rather mature

As someone who experienced this era first hand, I respectfully disagree. Online collaboration was certainly possible, and it certainly happened, but it was not even close to what I would call "mature". It was a colossal PITA. Again, there is a reason that Linus wrote Git, and it was not just that he was bored and needed something to do. He needed a tool that would make remote collaboration on the Linux kernel less of a PITA. And he succeeded quite spectacularly.

[chris_armstrong]

I think the tragedy is that we don't have fluid ways to move between them, that these different development modes (solitary and social, dynamic and static) have produced philosophically and practically incompatible tools and methodologies.

[kragen]

I think he was at the AI Lab in the 70s and consequently familiar with that sort of programming activity. Maybe he just hasn't found it as creative, or as enjoyable, as I have.