Beating the Averages

For this article I think we all already have notions of Lisp, at least about its capacity to play with the lists, and to bend a little the concepts that we traditionally have learn about the way of programming, but the author here goes way further. He tells us a story about a success case, but not any success case, his own startup. In this context he shows us how the use of Lisp gave him and his associated a market advantage over all the other startups.

Okay, I think in this case this whole article may be easy to misinterpret because of the way he is telling us everything, even when there is explain that the case isn’t the only reason for considering Lisp as a viable option (and even a better option), It felt weird. Even with this fact, the article just gave me a new case to investigate for getting even a better impression of this language.

One of the points that is repeated in the article several times is about the strategy in the startups, specially having as a reference point the ignorance of other programmers, unknowing Lisp, and the competitive advantage that this represents; but the author doesn’t stops there, he gives us even more reasons to believe on Lisp, not only for not being widely understood by the competitors, but also for the capacity of Lisp for making macros. This might not be that impactful until is explained that this was one of the main reasons for the success of Viaweb.

Just with this little article, the author leaves in a great position the concept of his favorite language, and encourages even more people, that had doubt about the power that Lisp can offer, to learn, to improve and to develop with this incredible tool that might not appear that attractive at first term.