Lisp: love the language, hate the people

nothinghappens.net

20 points·iamelgringo··9 comments

I visited #lisp only a handful of times, but the one time I tried asking a question, I received a flamebath along with my answer. If newcomers step on your toes, channel regulars should have the maturity to deal with it respectfully. I'm not entirely new to Lisp, and I'm not stupid, so why not take the time to try and educate instead of discourage? I asked just that, and I got very close to, "why waste the energy, you'll never learn." Ten minutes in an IRC channel isn't enough time to make such a judgement.

The article above may be a bit blunt about it, but I think the term "douchebaggery" is pretty darned accurate from my experience with #lisp.

Do you think the problem is that LISP has been tied up with academia for too long for the community to be friendly?

I think the problem is mostly imaginary.

It's not imaginary, but it is unimportant. Spend a day in #haskell, #python, or #ruby asking basic questions about the language, then repeat in #lisp.

There are helpful people in the CL channel, but most newbie assistance ends with the veteran delivering a scolding. That doesn't consistently happen in other language channels, but perhaps it should.

It shouldn't if said language wants to stay popular. Community will always trump any flaw.

I visit #lisp for about a year and the guys are cool. Good discussions with maintainers of some projects like Zach. I agree with PG, it's mostly imaginary.

A pity that just a few eccentric people can actually destroy the reputation of a programming language.

http://programming.reddit.com/info/updn/comments/

That was unfortunate. But the community did jump in and tried too help. There was no one else saying or doing anything weird. Anyone can do something stupid. It was stupid and mean.

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