Lisp

The real problem with Lisp is that it was designed without any consideration of the cognitive load experienced by the programmer.  The syntax may be simple, but the semantics are extremely complex and hard to master.  This is completely at odds with needs of the programmer. 

The main cognitive load is in developing a solution to the real world problem.  The programmer is engaged in reflective cognition.  Basic UI principles dictate that, when designing tools to aid in reflective cognition, they must as intellectually shallow as possible.  The less cognition required to operate them, the more is available for completing the required task.

Lisp was unintentionally designed for experiential cognition.  It contains many artifacts, each with a very deep and rich set of semantics.  All cognition must be devoted to its operation.  It is no surprise that it only attracts programmers who are only interested in using it for its own sake.

Alright, I've officially had it with this.

First, of all what is the Big Fucking Deal with Common Lisp? I started using various Lisps in highschool. Yes, CL is a very nice language. It is not that goddamned hard to learn.  Even if >>1 is trolling, I still don't get this myth that programming in Lisp is some mythical skill only attainable to the Gods of programming. It's just a nice language that's fun to use.

And before all of the 25-year-old neckbeards come to jerk off about how great Lisp is: Lisp is not a panacea. You are a shitty coder in every language, and skimming through SICP and Practical Common Lisp does not make you more enlightened than someone who uses Java to pay the bills.

I wish everyone would close their ignorant fucking mouths about the 'philosophy' of CL. It's been around forever, there isn't a whole lot left to be said about it, and superficial understanding is not a ticket for your to shoot off your shit cannon.

>>2

In my experience, CL is expressive and fluid. Haskell feels terrible and arbitrarily complicated. It offends me when the language designers think so little of me that they have to constrain what I'm able to do because "they know what's best." Fuck that.

I gave up on both, and now I'm looking at OCaml, mainly because it's fast (Python is too fucking slow, Haskell has those fun space leaks (lazy evaluation is, in my opinion, a stupid novelty), and figuring out exactly how to optimize a CL program is like nailing jelly to a tree). It saves me from writing C all of the time, I guess.