<story><title>I still Lisp (2021)</title><url>https://betterprogramming.pub/why-i-still-lisp-and-you-should-too-18a2ae36bd8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gaze</author><text>I have a suspicion that outside of the 10 people writing lisp seriously—shirakumo, stylewarning, lispm, and some others— there’s more characters of prose praising lisp being written than lisp being written. It’s a great language. I really like it and am using it for some projects. I just want people to actually use it rather than talking about using it.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I’m wrong in the present case! Author has some cool projects on GitHub under themetaschemer. Still though I’m struck by the ratio of lisp project articles vs lisp praising articles hitting HN’s front page.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>neilv</author><text>(I&amp;#x27;ve done a lot of Lisp, for money, and for open source platform&amp;amp;community buildout.)&lt;p&gt;HN articles about exotic things, not just Lisp, do seem to get upvoted disproportionately.&lt;p&gt;Also, PG declared Lisp as something you&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;supposed&lt;/i&gt; to think is important or a superpower, and I&amp;#x27;ve wondered whether that also contributes to some upvotes on HN.&lt;p&gt;But I&amp;#x27;m not aware that a single one of the bajillion YC startups used Lisp.&lt;p&gt;Maybe it&amp;#x27;s like an admirable religious dogma that a congregation affirms each weekend, and then promptly forgets about for the rest of the week.</text></comment>
<story><title>I still Lisp (2021)</title><url>https://betterprogramming.pub/why-i-still-lisp-and-you-should-too-18a2ae36bd8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gaze</author><text>I have a suspicion that outside of the 10 people writing lisp seriously—shirakumo, stylewarning, lispm, and some others— there’s more characters of prose praising lisp being written than lisp being written. It’s a great language. I really like it and am using it for some projects. I just want people to actually use it rather than talking about using it.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I’m wrong in the present case! Author has some cool projects on GitHub under themetaschemer. Still though I’m struck by the ratio of lisp project articles vs lisp praising articles hitting HN’s front page.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>floren</author><text>I think Lisp has a sort of cachet to it, &amp;quot;lost secret of the ancients scorned by foolish mortals,&amp;quot; that draws a lot of people to talk about it endlessly and speculate about how important it is instead of just... using it. I used to see the same thing in the Plan 9 community where people loved to post on the mailing list about all their grand plans for doing stuff with Plan 9, but they never even installed the goddamn thing! If they had, they&amp;#x27;d have realized it has some neat ideas but it&amp;#x27;s also just a software system, and a rough-around-the-edges research system at that. Similarly, Lisp is just a programming language, and regardless of how many blog posts you read about it, you&amp;#x27;ll still have to actually &lt;i&gt;make the program&lt;/i&gt; in the end.</text></comment>