Re (tilly) 2: Perl vs Lisp/Java/C/C++

[tilly]

You may have had a miserable experience with Lisp, but I think that you are writing it off far too easily. First of all a 500,000 line Java program is likely to be about a 50,000 line Lisp program. The factor of 10 difference in code size for the same task will pay for itself in maintainability. OK, since the lines will do more they will be harder to follow. Say a factor of 3. But that makes the overall code base about a factor of 3 easier to understand.

Of course just glancing at the code base what you first notice is that you have to think. As petral pointed out to me once, this is analagous to the division between readable and legible fonts. Legible fonts are ones which can be seen easily from a distance and under poor viewing conditions. A readable font is one which you can easily read large quantities of. They are not the same. Lisp is very definitely not legible. But it lends itself to readable code.

And it gets better. Your reduced code size makes it possible to work with a smaller team. Since intrateam communication has been known for decades to be the biggest bottleneck on large projects, that is an even bigger win. Therefore you have less code, your code base is easier to understand, and you have a smaller team that can work faster. Who would you bet on?

This isn't just theory. Read Paul Graham's article Beating The Averages about the history of ViaWeb. One of the many points that he made is that they found that any competitor who was advertising for Java programmers could just be written off. They simply weren't going to be serious competition...

(Many of the same points apply to Perl of course...)