Subject: Re: Lisp's future
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 28 Jan 2004 09:27:39 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3284270859149049KL2065E@naggum.no>

* Erik Naggum
> Common Lisp will always be there for programmers who need to work out
> the solution while coding and watching the computer work on the data.

* Erann Gat
> Joel Spolsky says this is (unconditionally) a bad idea.

  In fact, he said no such thing, so I never fell for the obvious bait.

* Gareth McCaughan
| This all seems a bit surreal to me, anyway.  There's no inconsistency
| between using Lisp and writing specs.

  Precisely.  Erann Gat equated what I said with «aimless hacking», and
  his bait only applies to such a surreal reading of what I wrote.  Some
  things have not changed in a year...

| Programs written in Lisp are generally easier to change than programs
| written in C++.  That doesn't mean you *have* to go changing them all
| the time.  (It does mean that some of the costs of change are lower,
| which means that some of the reasons for writing specs in advance are
| weaker, which may or may not be enough to make a suck-it-and-see
| approach better than a first-write-your-spec approach in some cases.)
| It doesn't mean you *can't* write a spec at the start.  All it means
| is that when you need to make changes (which you do, even if there's a
| detailed spec from the outset and the requirements never change and
| the spec was done *really* well) you can make them more easily.  How
| can that be bad?

  Very well said.  You relieved me completely of commenting on this.

-- 
Erik Naggum | Oslo, Norway                                      2004-028

Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.