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Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.

Eric S. Raymond

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Eric S. Raymond
Age: 66
Born: 1957
Born: December 4
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Journalist
Lawyer
Programmer
Software Developer
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Eric Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond
ESR
Actually
Programmers
Use
Enlightenment
Experience
Profound
Better
Finally
Even
Worth
Make
Rest
Never
Learning
Lisp
Days
Programmer

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Prototype, then polish. Get it working before you optimize it
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Why the hell hasn't wxPython become the standard GUI for Python yet?
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With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow.
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On first blush this looks to be about money, but it is about power. Is power going to go to the information monopolies, or will it go to developers and users?.
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The combination of threads, remote-procedure-call interfaces, and heavyweight object-oriented design is especially dangerous... if you are ever invited onto a project that is supposed to feature all three, fleeing in terror might well be an appropriate reaction.
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Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow (e.g., given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone).
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In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color.
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Thompson and Ritchie were among the first to realize that hardware and compiler technology had become good enough that an entire operating system could be written in C, and by 1978 the whole environment had been successfully ported to several machines of different types.
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Of course, C proved indispensible to the developers of all its alternatives. Dig down through enough implementation layers under any of the other languages surveyed here and you will find a core implemented in pure, portable C
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Lisp was far more powerful and flexible than any other language of its day in fact, it is still a better design than most languages of today, twenty-five years later. Lisp freed ITS's hackers to think in unusual and creative ways. It was a major factor in their successes, and remains one of hackerdom's favorite languages.
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Equally, the Internet interprets attempts at proprietary control as threats and mobilizes to defeat them.
Eric S. Raymond
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And for any agents or proxy of the regime interested in asking me questions face to face, I've got some bullets slathered in pork fat to make you feel extra special welcome.
Eric S. Raymond
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Linux evolved in a completely different way. From nearly the beginning, it was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the Internet.
Eric S. Raymond
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The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.
Eric S. Raymond
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Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.
Eric S. Raymond
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Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry
Eric S. Raymond
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The Wesnoth devs are good but not exceptionally so, and we're weighed down by a crappy implementation language (C++). Nevertheless our productivity, in terms of goals achieved per hour of work, is quite high.
Eric S. Raymond
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Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.
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Grovelling is not a substitute for doing your homework.
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Being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker anymore than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer.
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