I just finished reading the article “Beating the Average” by Paul Graham. The author argues that LISP is the most powerful languages. He explains how that helps his startup company Viaweb to beat their competitors. In the author’s view, program languages fall in an abstractness continuum and vary in power. A higher-level language programmer, if look downwards, will find the lower-level language not acceptable. However, if he looks upwards, he would think the languages are all the same.
The author makes the point that programming language is a habit. People are used to their favorite language and are reluctant to change. Therefore a lot of ordinary programmers code in “median” languages and never change.
I like the article and the way the points are made. However, I suspect that their technologies are better than the competitors because they are smart people. If they use another language, probably they are still at a better position.
Following are some quotes from the article:
- Programming languages are not merely technologies, but habits of mind as well, and nothing changes slower.
- This idea is rarely followed to its conclusion, though. After a certain age, programmers rarely switch languages voluntarily. Whatever language people happen to be used to, they tend to consider just good enough.
- We weren’t writing this code for our own amusement. We were a tiny startup, programming as hard as we could in order to put technical barriers between us and our competitors.
- But I don’t expect to convince anyone (over 25) to go out and learn Lisp.
- Ordinarily technology changes fast. But programming languages are different: programming languages are not just technology, but what programmers think in. They’re half technology and half religion.
