do...until wisdom needed...

[Douglas Alan]

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes:

> Inertia of existing organizations, do I hear?  Then why didn't Lisp
> or Scheme dominate among the no-legacy-code startups that mushroomed
> in the late '90s?

As a Lisp and Scheme lover I think I can answer this question.  Lack
of strong type-checking is now typically considered a major impediment
to large programming projects.  Also, I never pursued a Lisp
programming career, because I didn't want to get stuck in what I
perceived would be a ghetto.  I've already committed myself to the
Unix ghetto -- being in multiple ghettos at once would be detrimental
to my career.

Another reason is that CS courses taught in Scheme are typical very
mind-bending and deep.  Many people don't like to have their mind bent
that deeply, and thus will be resentful of Scheme to their dying day.
The bending of their minds was good for them, nonetheless.  People
such as I who love to have their minds bent, on the other hand, end up
loving Scheme and the way they were taught CS.

|>oug