5 ms·

I understand your point of view, but absurdly expensive is a very relative term. When I do a cost benefit analysis, I see that the cost for my use case is quite

I understand your point of view, but absurdly expensive is a very relative term. When I do a cost benefit analysis, I see that the cost for my use case is quite cheap. I have the benefit of only having to convince myself. That being said, I have worked at much larger companies who spent much more on various software licenses and wouldn't have blinked if I submitted an expense report for $3100 for a piece of software. The IDE is proprietary, but the code is all Common Lisp. If one had to leave the platform, or the platform went away, you might have a problem with the native UI layer, but not with any other code. The price does reflect the difficulties a company has when there has been a race to the bottom in pricing, or in the case of Apple and Microsoft, the floor was removed for development tools.

overgard 5y ago
For a company, sure, it's nothing. But the problem is if you want your community to grow you need to appeal to hobbyist and beginners and students etc. That kind of pricing model just guarantees stagnation, and who wants to invest time in a stagnant technology? Lets say LispWorks is like 50% more efficient to work in if you know it, but javascript is free, has 50000x more users and jobs. Why would any sane person go with LispWorks? Of course I'm guessing most Lispers go with emacs etc. but those tools are of course also a huge problem. I really agree with the article, Lisp is a lovely language but it would be much more accessible if I were using it in VSCode
- diskzero 5y ago
  My issue with Lisp in VSCode is that it isn't really Lisp. Yes, you are coding in Lisp, but the language is just one element. I have tried the various plugins and they have a long ways to go. Unless you have tried an integrated Lisp environment, it is hard to completely describe it. I understand your point about the pricing, stagnation and the job market. This is a problem any language outside of the mainstream has, whether it is Lisp, Dylan, Erlang, Clojure, etc. Someone can always come along and promote Javascript or some other more popular language as a solution.
  - sitkack 5y ago
    Elixir was an amazing bridge between two language populations that would have died out. Ruby and Erlang. It gave Erlang a huge immigrant population that frankly gentrified Erlang's 80s nerd vibe to a 2005 hipster aesthetic updated to 2015. 9/10 programmers writing code that runs on the Erlang VM are writing in Elixir. It also gave Ruby folks that faced the contraction of Rails as the startup juggernaut that it was, a place to go, and a runtime that enabled massive web scale (non-ironic). These folks had already hit these problems in their previous jobs, so the realworld experience of the folks that showed up was high. All of this adds up to a great outcome for Erlang, Elixir and the Ruby programmers.
- TurboHaskal 5y ago
  It's mostly survival over stagnation. There were cheaper Common Lisp vendors and where are they now? In my case I pay for it because I can afford it and would rather write Common Lisp than in Javascript.

overgard 5y ago

For a company, sure, it's nothing. But the problem is if you want your community to grow you need to appeal to hobbyist and beginners and students etc. That kind of pricing model just guarantees stagnation, and who wants to invest time in a stagnant technology? Lets say LispWorks is like 50% more efficient to work in if you know it, but javascript is free, has 50000x more users and jobs. Why would any sane person go with LispWorks? Of course I'm guessing most Lispers go with emacs etc. but those tools are of course also a huge problem. I really agree with the article, Lisp is a lovely language but it would be much more accessible if I were using it in VSCode

diskzero 5y ago
My issue with Lisp in VSCode is that it isn't really Lisp. Yes, you are coding in Lisp, but the language is just one element. I have tried the various plugins and they have a long ways to go. Unless you have tried an integrated Lisp environment, it is hard to completely describe it. I understand your point about the pricing, stagnation and the job market. This is a problem any language outside of the mainstream has, whether it is Lisp, Dylan, Erlang, Clojure, etc. Someone can always come along and promote Javascript or some other more popular language as a solution.
- sitkack 5y ago
  Elixir was an amazing bridge between two language populations that would have died out. Ruby and Erlang. It gave Erlang a huge immigrant population that frankly gentrified Erlang's 80s nerd vibe to a 2005 hipster aesthetic updated to 2015. 9/10 programmers writing code that runs on the Erlang VM are writing in Elixir. It also gave Ruby folks that faced the contraction of Rails as the startup juggernaut that it was, a place to go, and a runtime that enabled massive web scale (non-ironic). These folks had already hit these problems in their previous jobs, so the realworld experience of the folks that showed up was high. All of this adds up to a great outcome for Erlang, Elixir and the Ruby programmers.
TurboHaskal 5y ago
It's mostly survival over stagnation. There were cheaper Common Lisp vendors and where are they now? In my case I pay for it because I can afford it and would rather write Common Lisp than in Javascript.