| > Even many people who programmed enough lisp to have their minds blown and expanded still prefer not to program in lisp. I can guarantee you that most of these simply didn't go far enough; they had their "minds blown" with too little. They latched onto a highlight or two, found a way of sort doing that in C++ or Javascript and moved on. There are people who have had their "minds blown" by time/mass dilation of special relativity, or phenomena in quantum physics, who don't actually know anything about physics; they couldn't work out how far a canon ball will land fired at a 45 degree angle with a certain velocity, though they can crack jokes about Schrödinger's cat. For those of us sticking with the Lisp program, in one way or another, it was more of a sequence of small revelations in a progression of topics. Oh, that's a good way of representing that; that is pretty nicely thought out; that fits well with that; they had that how many decades ago? Sheesh; ... Then once you start grappling with the Lisp issues, and kick the rock farther down the road, even in some small way, you are invested. |
And I can guarantee that I knew, when I wrote my comment, that I was summoning this very "No true Scotsman" argument.
> they couldn't work out how far a canon ball will land fired at a 45 degree angle with a certain velocity, though they can crack jokes about Schrödinger's cat.
It always superciliously starts with how true lisp people are the most brilliant ever.
> Then once you start grappling with the Lisp issues, and kick the rock farther down the road, even in some small way, you are invested.
And is eventually undermined by an admission of cognitive inflexibility, although not usually so quickly or in the same comment. Good job!