"Revenge of the Nerd" - Personnal Comments


This article was written by Paul Graham in the year 2002. It deals with the differences between programming languages and especially the importance to chose the correct language when writing a new software or solving a problem. 

Once again, the language Lisp is defended. It is said that programmers can write much faster in Lisp than other languages such as C. From a competitive point of view it is true that it is an advantage for a company to have Lisp programmers if they can write software and deliver it two or three times faster than other programmers. 

But if Lisp is such a good language, why isn’t it still widely used ? I have looked for an internship 6 months ago and I have never came across an offer that asked for some Lisp skills.
The picture that the author uses to describe a random IT manager that is afraid to take “cutting-edge” decisions is quite good. I think he is right. It can be dangerous to take risks because if a project fails it can have huge financial impacts on the company. The manager might think it is safer to chose a programming language that more programmers know and which they will have less difficulties to develop the software. 

I think start-ups may use uncommon or rarely used language such as Lisp or Fortran because if they do it means that they have the resources. They won’t waste time to find a programmer or train a programmer with these skills. 

I will conclude with the following statement : people chose to write a software in a certain language not because they think it is the best but because it is the one they know best. In today’s world by the time a programmer learns a new language he will be catched up by competition.

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