I'm pretty sure that Lisp isn't as worthy as Gabriel paints it, for this simple reason: We grasp the static-verse more readily than the dynamic.
At most levels of work, we aren't actually making enormous changes all at once - even in the writing analogy, a story has to be written one sentence at a time, and if the concepts start changing partway through, the rewrite has to be done....one sentence at a time. The breakthrough concept that turns everything on its head is usually itself just one sentence.
In programming, we change two lines and then run the program again, we build on known, tested libraries and languages, we develop a concept on paper and then implement it. And because these things are built on a small foundation of logical concepts, we can build the language to ensure ever-greater levels of self-consistency that would otherwise only be manifested at runtime.
Feedback loops.
The fiction writer has a short feedback loop - the "state" of a story is small - no explosions of complexity as one would get with loops or recursion - so its progression can be kept in her head.
The programmer has a longer feedback loop, because her expectation is not to maintain the entire progression of the program in her head, but to let the computer do it and then display the results in some manner.
Dynamicness optimizes the feedback loop for greater incrementalism: the program runs until it hits any one point where an irreconcilable error is encountered, and then multiple options are available to fix the error and even let the program continue.
Staticness optimizes the feedback loop for "batch" error-checking: the programmer writes a full body of code she thinks is correct, with no run/test cycle to speak of, and then gets all the errors at once. When the program compiles, it works.
Since we can't implement either ideology perfectly, it's probably best to have some of _both_.
Comments
I'm pretty sure that Lisp isn't as worthy as Gabriel paints it, for this simple reason: We grasp the static-verse more readily than the dynamic.
At most levels of work, we aren't actually making enormous changes all at once - even in the writing analogy, a story has to be written one sentence at a time, and if the concepts start changing partway through, the rewrite has to be done....one sentence at a time. The breakthrough concept that turns everything on its head is usually itself just one sentence.
In programming, we change two lines and then run the program again, we build on known, tested libraries and languages, we develop a concept on paper and then implement it. And because these things are built on a small foundation of logical concepts, we can build the language to ensure ever-greater levels of self-consistency that would otherwise only be manifested at runtime.
Feedback loops.
The fiction writer has a short feedback loop - the "state" of a story is small - no explosions of complexity as one would get with loops or recursion - so its progression can be kept in her head.
The programmer has a longer feedback loop, because her expectation is not to maintain the entire progression of the program in her head, but to let the computer do it and then display the results in some manner.
Dynamicness optimizes the feedback loop for greater incrementalism: the program runs until it hits any one point where an irreconcilable error is encountered, and then multiple options are available to fix the error and even let the program continue.
Staticness optimizes the feedback loop for "batch" error-checking: the programmer writes a full body of code she thinks is correct, with no run/test cycle to speak of, and then gets all the errors at once. When the program compiles, it works.
Since we can't implement either ideology perfectly, it's probably best to have some of _both_.