Don't Break The Chain

This doesn't have anything to do with Lisp. Depending on what they view as fulfilling, some people veer away from difficult problems regardless of the language they are writing in. Working in a "more fun" language like Lisp doesn't make you more likely to avoid doing hard work, nor does writing in a "less fun" language like Java increase your propensity to actually deal with the difficult segments. Its a matter of self-control, and is, unfortunately, an issue for programmers in every language.

It's a phenomena described in "The Bipolar Lisp Programmer" (http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm).

Lisp hackers spend so much time various participating in flame wars they have neither the time nor energy to make a good web site, or application, change clothes, do the dishes, move out of the graduate dormitory, hold down a job, etc.

And apparently every day, no less.

But seriously, of course he did. People want to hear the hits, not the stuff you thought of in the shower that morning. Nice work if you can get it, though.

Actually, his repertoire was pretty huge, he never worked blue, and he's among the most successful comics of all time (economically speaking). The last season of Seinfeld paid him (and his co-stars) $1 million per episode.

He's not my favorite comic (or even in the top ten), but I'll take productivity advice from Seinfeld any day, all day.

"Don't you understand anything about commitment, about being a pro, about sticking with what you say you wanna be? You don't just do it when you feel good. You do it every day of your life. You do it when it hurts to do it, when it's the last thing in the world you wanna do. You do it because you're a professional." --Teddy Atlas

Said to Michael Moorer when he wanted to skip a day of road-work while training to fight Holyfield.

... the race has begun.