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Comment by chj | Hacker News Reader

I've read this "news" like dozens of times, and every time I can't help laughing. What he is speaking of is generally true. If I am not writing in C, then I am writing in ASM for speed, or in LISP for less code. C++ just doesn't fit in my tool chain, because it really doesn't excel in any aspect.

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C++ (and other mainstream languages, for that matter) excels in the aspect that you can actually write useful software with it. Yet, to the date, there are exactly zero useful pieces of consumer software (e.g. browsers, office suites, video processing) written in lisp. Thus, I suggest that lisp zealots stfu about C/C++ already, and either fix their favorite language or invent a new one.

Yeah, of course, right... that's why we have Lisp programs on space probes [1], PS2 games written in Lisp [2], PG's Viaweb, Maxima [3] among others, ITA Software, Emacs, StumpWM, and a ton of other stuff I can't remember right now. Ah not to forget AutoCAD. I don't give a flying fart whether it's "consumer" software or not. A ton of useful software has been and is written in Lisp dialects and there are a lot of application domains that are really hard where you just cannot use C++ (or some other blub) because it's just not expressive enough. Often those are not consumer applications because most consumer applications are really mundane glorified reporting apps that could be coded in BASIC by a monkey (and if you read TDWTF you get the impression that happens more often than not).

tl;dr: Obvious troll is obvious.

[1] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/lather-rinse-repeat-a-tour-o...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp

[3] http://maxima.sourceforge.net/

Ah, "blub"... the trusty indicator of a brainwashed pg fanboy. Look, I know that something has been written in lisp, still it is not the kind of software that people use (directly or indirectly) every day and you know it. Plus, you're just being disgustingly arrogant by indirectly saying that your precious lisp is too good to be used for the mundane, everyday software development.

tl;dr: lisp zealots are funny and arrogant

UPD: FYI, AutoCAD is NOT written in Lisp, it just supports extensions written in a dialect of Lisp.

FWIW Emacs's core is C and extensions (the vast majority of the code) are in Lisp. This is a common model for dividing up the work between "engine" and personalization/customization stuff and I think it works well. But it's not true that it's a "Lisp program", or not solely one anyway. Not unlike AutoCAD...

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