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Comment by zabuni | Hacker News Reader

My biggest issue as well. People seem to be drawn to creating a DSL for their problem set, and then programming in that. I've thought of Go as the Anti Lisp, in that there will be NONE OF THOSE SHENANIGANS LIKE THAT HERE. I think that's why Go draws so much vehemence. It's the "No fun allowed" of computer languages.

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>>People seem to be drawn to creating a DSL for their problem set, and then programming in that.

You have to create a DSL for your problem, no matter what programming language you code in. Its just that most people never program in anything beyond their area of exposure, and their DSL which they creates just appears very normal to them. But not to others.

I recently had to use Go for the first time at work, while generally Common Lisp is my go-to language.

I kinda liked it for a systems language. It has conveniences trickled down from higher level languages[1] that are missing from C & C++ and which make them such a chore to use

[1] for example: garbage collection and being able to print an object without have to import vast libraries

These are things that Lisp programmers take for granted, but it's difficult to convince most C/C++ programmers of the advantages of garbage collection, as if they wanted it they wouldn't be using C/C++.

>advantages of garbage collection, as if they wanted it they wouldn't be using C/C++.

There are garbage collection libs for C++ and they are used by C++ programmers whenever necessary.

> People seem to be drawn to creating a DSL for their problem set, and then programming in that.

ML languages strike a pretty nice balance here, IMO. Your DSL tend to be normal code with a funny operator or two, structured into happy little lists.

I think your version of "fun" is my version of "proper abstraction and factoring".

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