1This history is sadly ignored by a majority of practicing programmers, to detrimental effect.
Why does this happen? The majority of practicing programmers are using languages, and environments designed by other people, but language designers need more skills and interest than ordinary programmers so we might expect that they would be more likely to know about this and include the desirable features in the languages they create. (See James Gosling’s quote about Java dragging C programmers half way to LISP).
What happened to the knowledge/skills/interest between the people who implemented LISP as pioneers, the people who learned on the pioneering LISP systems, and the people who create C#, Java, etc.?
Are they really lost and now being ‘rediscovered’, or were they pioneered, found wanting, and left dormant until technology, software and communications advanced enough to be able to make good use of them?
(“It was better in the old days, let me tell you about the old days” is a recurrent theme in programmer blogs, and I wonder if it’s really a signal of being in the in-crowd, rather than a genuine belief which alters behaviour accordingly and causes their software to include the sorts of features they are praising).
Why does this happen? The majority of practicing programmers are using languages, and environments designed by other people, but language designers need more skills and interest than ordinary programmers so we might expect that they would be more likely to know about this and include the desirable features in the languages they create. (See James Gosling’s quote about Java dragging C programmers half way to LISP).
What happened to the knowledge/skills/interest between the people who implemented LISP as pioneers, the people who learned on the pioneering LISP systems, and the people who create C#, Java, etc.?
Are they really lost and now being ‘rediscovered’, or were they pioneered, found wanting, and left dormant until technology, software and communications advanced enough to be able to make good use of them?
(“It was better in the old days, let me tell you about the old days” is a recurrent theme in programmer blogs, and I wonder if it’s really a signal of being in the in-crowd, rather than a genuine belief which alters behaviour accordingly and causes their software to include the sorts of features they are praising).