The Viamentis Blog

Well, there are times the c.l.l can be a pretty depressing place - people complaining on why Lisp cannot be used for production use, lack of libraries, blah blah blah - but there are times when it’s simply inspiring. As I am working more and more with lisp, and I really don’t see what’s wrong with it. I am coming more and more to the conclusion that I have been suspecting for a while - Lisp is a language for smart programmers, and very few will put in the efforts to learn it fully, as the learning curve is indeed steep, compared to say, Ruby. And those few, are worth hiring.
Here are a couple of recent c.l.l threads that make many points I agree with, and should be read for the great points they make. I can see Viamentis becoming a Lisp-heavy shop in the future - I am feeling more and more confident that it is indeed a great language to build large systems in. Sure, there are many libraries to be written, and it sounds like great fun to me :).

Ah, I guess I don’t have to give you the link, as most people in the know seem to read her blog anyway. But I think her latest post is especially insightful. I have to agree. I have been using Rails for a while, and yes, it’s a great tool to build web applications is a snap. But there’s a lot of “magic” in there, where most coders don’t want to see what’s behind it. Perhaps you can’t blame them, because we all want to save time, so who cares about what’s behind the magic?

But it turns out that it’s very important to see your tool’s guts, and understand them. Because, at some point of time, you will out grow your tool. You want something more powerful, or something it does is not especially to your taste. When I first started looking at Lisp’s suitability for web development, I was bewildered because there seemed very few libraries available, and looking at how slick Rails seems to make the whole thing, it was as if I was thrown back to dark ages of web development again.

However, there was a cruicial difference - the language itself totally rocks, much more powerful than Ruby, I have to say. And much, much more difficult to master. Is it worth the time you invest in learning it? I have yet to find an answer to that, but I enjoy doing it, so I’m still sticking to it for now. And there were quite a few instances where I had to re-implement the tools that Rails offers for my Lisp web project. And it felt good to know what it really takes to make all those “magic” tools. Yes, sometimes it’s good to get your hands dirty and write your own tools. As Kathy says, it will make you smarter, definitely.

Wow. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t read Dave Winer more often. I know a lot of people love his blog and read it religiously, but it has always been a bit of a bore to me. Perhaps I should give it another try. Here’s the reason. Wonderful piece of analysis.