Revenge of the Nerds

All started with the term “point-headed bosses”. It was the first time I heard or read about it. But the author’s point is truth. Nowadays, there are programmers out there that thinks that the best programming language to solve any kind of problem is Java. I liked how the author used this fact to start one argument: programming languages are not equivalent and there will always be a different and better language to solve a specific problem. But there is an interesting pattern, each new programming language is becoming more like Lisp. Why? It is like we want to reach something that we already had 60 years ago.

I found interesting the fact that Lisp, when it was created, was not meant to be as it is nowadays. John McCarthy didn’t intend to develop a programming language. It was a theorical exercise and an effort to define a convenient alternative to the Turing Machine. It was thanks to Steve Russel that Lisp is as we know it nowadays. He programmed the “eval” (A function that compute the value of a Lisp expression). 

An important point was latter included: Why Lisp is different from all the other extensive list of programming languages? Once again, macros. On previous blog entries I already talked about the power of Macros and they’re even better for me when I realized that they exist thanks to two “accidentally” Lisp’s base ideas (Whole language there all time and notation for code using trees, symbols and constants). So, this means that Lisp is the best programming language because of an accident?

Basically, every blog entry I have posted talks about articles telling us why or how Lisp is the best programming language. I still don’t understand, based on that fact, why Lisp is not used by every programmer? It seems like nobody can see the power of that tool. But, I don’t understand the point of the author and I think that he contradicted himself by saying that there is always a better language depending on the problem you are solving. That means that Lisp is not the “best” programming language it is just different.

Note: I would like to read something that talks about Lisp disadvantages or why Lisp is not the best programming language. It can’t be that perfect.

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