What's a not-that-terrible way to echo Steele's remarks in The Evolution of #Lisp that people use lisp because of our (in-arguably correct) perception that lisp is clearly the best, what Steele refers to as lisp's cachet.
I was also remembering <error>'s sometime remark that part of what keeps lisp great is the verdant mulch of people who really think lisp is the best doing their best to be the best, but they're actually mostly pretty nuts. I think it's important to be those people basically.
@hayley
Eh, do you ever delete things from your phlog? I can try and find it.
@hayley sorry for putting words into your mouth anyway. I was pretty sure I remembered it but didn't have a link prepared.
@hayley
Fwiw, your words were
"
the "lone wolves" of Lisp work as metaphorical compost: they are dead, and they smell funny, but they help produce better projects
"
https://applied-langua.ge/posts/lisp-curse-redemption-arc.html
@hayley oh, I left out a really key part of that sentence.
The half-done projects produced by the "lone wolves"
I guess the lone wolves themselves aren't dead and have more of a sophisticated fish smell.
@Gnuxie
Mmm, so my proximal thought that dragged me into this was reconciling clojure-style transducers with Waters' Series (in the curse, the comparison is lisp Series and Haskell). I wanted lisp to have the-best-thing, and it was unclear to me what that meant. Maybe wanting other people to agree with me or wanting to agree with others about what the-best-thing is is the mistake.
One product of the flame wars was that Series, generators and gatherers did become friends, eventually.
@hayley