The Myth of the Lone Hacker
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Most programmers start off their career relatively idealistic, and often marvel at the power of little used programming languages. For me, this language was Common Lisp, which I got to work with professionally. At first I believed that Lisp still had the power to revolutionize programming, but after a few years of work I realized exactly why Lisp ended up in the position it is now: community. Every programming community has a few core beliefs, both explicit and implicit, that shape the language, the libraries, and its users. The Haskell community believes that errors should be caught by the compiler as often as possible, and Ruby believes in the principle of least astonishment. The Lisp community suffers from a belief that I call the Myth of the Lone Hacker.
This code ain't big enough for the both of us...
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Most programmers start off their career relatively idealistic, and often marvel at the power of little used programming languages. For me, this language was Common Lisp, which I got to work with professionally. At first I believed that Lisp still had the power to revolutionize programming, but after a few years of work I realized exactly why Lisp ended up in the position it is now: community. Every programming community has a few core beliefs, both explicit and implicit, that shape the language, the libraries, and its users. The Haskell community believes that errors should be caught by the compiler as often as possible, and Ruby believes in the principle of least astonishment. The Lisp community suffers from a belief that I call the Myth of the Lone Hacker.
This code ain't big enough for the both of us...
Fortunately, the blog was short so I don't feel like I wasted too much time on it.
m.bergman
For Bruce Schneier, quanta only have one state : afraid.
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered. -- Voltaire
In most cases the only difference between disappointment and depression is your level of commitment. -- Marc Maron
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