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Ten Geek Business Myths
hpcanswers writes "Venture capitalist Ron Garret has posted a list of eleven (despite the title) common mistakes entrepreneurs with a technology background make. A common theme is that good ideas sell; in reality, what a customer wants sells. By extension, having a Ph.D. and holding a patent are not particularly helpful if the intended end-user does not have the same level of understanding of the widget as the creator does."
I like LISP (Scheme actually, don't know full LISP yet), but is it really so good? I even borrowed Paul Grahams book from the library recently, but only flipped through it. I simply have my doubts about the syntax: is it really OK for productivity? It looks kind of ugly and verbose.
I like some of the language features, but I am not convinced enough to switch.
Any experiences out there?
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I did a lot of Lisp back in school. I've never used it in real life, though. Here's the thing: most programming algorithms boil down to performing some operation over a list of objects. Languages that facilitate this process while alleviating you of housekeeping tend to be very productive. But if the syntax is too unconventional, no one will use it. So you need a language with built-in lists, easy iteration and mappable functions, and a conventional syntax that is easy to learn. Also, it should have lots of good libraries and be "correct" in a certain academic way, so there are no surprises and everything is explicit.
In other words, learn Python.
I like LISP (Scheme actually, don't know full LISP yet), but is it really so good? I even borrowed Paul Grahams book from the library recently, but only flipped through it. I simply have my doubts about the syntax: is it really OK for productivity? It looks kind of ugly and verbose.
Syntax is not the reason to avoid Lisp.
The biggest reason to think twice about using Lisp is library support. Do stuff in Python or Ruby (or even Perl) that uses regular expressions, ftp and email, date conversions, reading from zipped files, Unicode, MD5 checksums, MIME handling, and so on. Then do the same in Lisp using an out-of-the-box implementation that runs on all platforms. Just try it yourself.
I don't have a lot of LISP experience, but it looks like once you grok the LISP nature, it's an incredible environment. You can write new language primitives (no more complaining "Well, when I used to program in $LANG, we had the $FOO feature" -- you write an implementation of $FOO and use it just like it was part of the language). It's also easy to write complete mini-languages (or maybe I should say "extension languages"), so you can create a domain-specific language, then write all your code in that language. Kind of like writing numerical analysis programs using Mathematica instead of FORTRAN. It also seems to lend itself to "bottom up" development, making it easy to write (and test) small routines, then use those routines to build more powerful ones.
I've been meaning to get a handle on LISP for a long time now, just wish I had the free time to do so (I've got Paul Graham's book, as well as SICP).
Just junk food for thought...
"Cultural peculularities?"
Is that when you have the cultural peculiarity of ululating at people?
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Sounds like religion to me. I have worked with Lisp, and I have not found this to be true. In my experience, different languages are often better suited for different tasks, and those who believe that one language is optimized for everything just have a biased view based on their own preferences.
The details may be off, but the concept isn't. Both of my kids play youth soccer. One problem some naturally talented players have is that they're so much better than their fellow players, they don't pass because they find from experience that it is less effective than just keeping it themselves. So when they get promoted to leagues with better players, they don't have the mindset to pass when they should. Meanwhile players that take longer to develop learn to pass when they should, and do better once they play more skilled opposition.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.