Look I know Lisp quite well, have written more than one dialect of Lisp for fun, and have 25+ years of professional software development experience behind me. I don’t think there is anything you need to somehow understand better about “computing” to use Lisp. But you are welcome to convince me otherwise. Do you have any concrete examples?
> I don’t think there is anything you need to somehow understand better about “computing” to use Lisp
I am not saying that at all. If anything I said the opposite of that. I think, given how simple Lisp's syntax is, being able to write/use Lisp is almost trivial. However being able to use Lisp is a way that has given it an almost mythical status (one being discussed in this thread is the so-called "x10 programmer") requires far more than just being able to write Lisp
Can you give examples? I see a lot of hype but no actuals. Becoming super productive in any language requires a lot more skills than just learning the syntax and semantics of a language. So why do you think Lisp is different? It would help if you could point at real world projects that demonstrate your claims.
i can't tell you because the *lisp-king-lizard* will come and eat me if i divulge secrets
EDIT: see the problem i have with your post is its tone and refusal to read what i actually wrote. if you read it properly i am not saying anything different to what you seem to be saying: if you are a good programmer you can be productive in any language, including lisp. if you are a crappy programmer, knowing how to write lisp is not going to save you. knowing how to write lisp is trivial. even implementing some (minimal) dialect of lisp is not too difficult
on the other hand, i think that repl-driven development that is available to many (all?) common lisp implementations is unmatched in any language, and i think that this is unique to common lisp. please see the post by mikelevins in this thread that details this process. i think this can be a great productivity booster for production as well as exploratory programming. in any event i enjoy it a lot
If you think about GNU Emacs, that one is written in C and Emacs Lisp. The original one was written in TECO. I'm using two other ones, which are written in Lisp.
