Re: Storing data and code in a Db with LISP-like interface

Mikito Harakiri wrote:

> And if they were asking Maple or Mathematica he would be really freaked
> out?

Probably not. Neither would be a very good fit for the problem, and neither is widely used by serious programmers to implement general purpose programs. They are less "geeky" than Perl or Python or Lisp, in the common parlance of those that Graham considers "hackers". In fact, in that parlance, they are probably less geeky than Visual Basic.

>I don't understand what technical excellence has in common with
> success on marketplace. That is assuming that "hacking Lisp let alone
> Perl" has anything to to with technical excellence.

Graham is describing an unusual situation: that in which technical excellence is likely to be a dominant factor. He is suggesting that young programmers with an entrepreneurial bent find that situation and compete there.

Most software is produced in a different space, one in which it is hard to compete against entrenched producers. If I sat down with 50 of my closest friends and produced a better OS than Windows, it wouldn't be worth spit, I don't think, even if it was far superior to anything from Redmond.

But there is always an uncharted frontier in software, where new applications are competing, largely based on their merits. Graham was able to make quite a bit of money by competing in that space, based on not much more than being better at the tech side of things, at least according to Graham ;). Remember that Viaweb was a fairly early commercial web app, and that a lot of what we now consider routine was first charted at that time. Received on Sat Apr 22 2006 - 12:49:22 CEST