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From: Xah Lee on 3 Aug 2010 14:32
some comment on Erik Naggum.

full article at:

• Death Of A Troll (My Memory of Erik Naggum)
http://xahlee.org/Netiquette_dir/death_of_a_troll.html

plain text version of the added part follows
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Discovered a blog article, that summarizes some of Erik's ideas in 28
quotes. The quote headings are:

* On the Free Software movement
* On how C “feels fast”
* On “Worse is Better” (aka the New Jersey Approach)
* A reply to any programmer who sticks to C because of “speed”
* On the value of reading Open Source code
* On markets and “giving people what they want”
* On the decline of professional equipment for programming
* On the wastefulness of language proliferation
* On the “Imponator”
* On the deficiencies of HTML
* On the decline of programming as a serious professional field
* On the lack of ads for “Lisp jobs”
* On the “Y2K Problem”
* On why there isn’t an ocean of “Lisp jobs”
* On parentheses-phobia
* What killed micropayments
* On “CD-R brains”
* On programmers with the “poor farmer” mentality”
* On market fragmentation
* On how sharing source may discourage design flexibility
* On the idiotic fallacy that “a good programmer shouldn’t care
about language choice”
* On conformism
* On “manual-inches”
* Reply to someone who complained about the cost of ANSI Standard
documents
* On how certain languages discourage conscientious programming
* On labor unions
* On how the corporate dead can prey on the living

The Wisdom of Erik Naggum (2010), by Stanislav Datskovskiy. At Source.

Erik's writings are often too much abuse and rambling, but Stanislav's
selective quotes presents his ideas very well. Though, i must say most
of Erik's ideas stand as pithy quotes only. They lacks academic depth.
For broad scholars, i'd say most of Erik's ideas are common sense.
What lacks that would make much of his ideas more useful is in-depth
analysis or further research. For example, in «On why there isn’t an
ocean of “Lisp jobs”», Erik compared to the fact that there's not much
job listing for neurosurgeons. Yeah, it makes you see a point. But
that's about it. if you delve into this, either there's no depth to
it, or, would lead to many years of research on multiple facets. For
example, first of all, intelligent person really won't be asking a
dumb question as “why there's no lisp jobs” as the way Erik answered
it. Now, if you ask the question why there's not much job listing for
neurosurgeons... the answer is quite complex. First of all, actually
i'm sure there are a lot job listings for neurosurgeons. You just need
to look into the right community or place. So the question is more
about why there's no job listings for neurosurgeons in a general job
board. Of course, that became a dumb question. So, at this point, to
make something out of Erik's writing, it might be about research on
the history job listings, survey of job boards, categorization of job
and careers thru time, study on the relation between career and job
boards, research on segmentation of job boards... or summery of the
results of these research. None of these came out of Erik's writing.

In fact, some of Erik's ideas so quoted are in fact bordering on being
incorrect. So, why there's little lisp jobs? Of course, the answer is
because lisp language is dead, and is not used much in the industry.
At the height of lisp days in the 1980s, i'm sure there's lots lisp
jobs. The meat behind the question “why there's no lisp jobs” is
really from the implied premises that lisp is a powerful quality
language. So, the question is a disguised form of “why a powerful
language isn't used in the industry?”. In this question, the first
thing to ascertain is whether lisp is such a great language at all.
This question immediately present a problem for scholarly discussion.
It's too broad and meaningless. Even if you agree to some degree that
lisp is “just great”, there are so many factors that influences the
shape of society. e.g. timing, marketing, political stability, market
situation... nothing to do with the quality of the language itself.
Concerning the language, there are also factors not related to
computer-science, e.g. maybe lisp syntax with its nested parens
ultimately is un-friendly or costy to get accustomed to? So, you see,
when looked in depth, “pithy quotes” type of writings is good just to
make a point. Academically, they fall apart into mundane facts or
irrelevance.

The blog author Stanislav actually linked me in his block roll.
Thanks!

Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄
From: Elena on 4 Aug 2010 17:15
Lisp programmers as neurosurgeons. It makes sense.

There is an ocean of job listings for family doctors. There are few
jobs for neurosurgeons.

There is an ocean of job listings for code drones. There are few jobs
for skilled software engineers.

Lisp is not a bureaucratic language and most programming jobs are from
bureaucratic companies.

That's it.

Cheers.
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