[kbenson]

I suspect that if mathematicians who were creating alternate number systems without calculus were continually learning the usefulness of calculus and telling the world, then yes, those who advised its inclusion for years would be annoyed, if only because it took so damn long and so much time was wasted.

[JadeNB]

Assuming that one is a fan of the sort of abstract computer-scientific approach to programming embodied by Lisp (and I am!), then it should be a good thing when people discover it.

Is there a benefit in spreading this discovery to others, even after it's been known so long? Certainly I think so; it's new to everyone at some point, and, since I wasn't originally motivated to read McCarthy's original papers, I wouldn't have discovered the ideas of Lisp without recent expositions of it. Granting the benefit of this, who can better communicate with the unenlightened, in terms familiar to them, than a recent convert? (Although, as braythwayt points out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9641279), he is scarcely a newcomer to the party.)