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Comment on The Bipolar Lisp Programmer

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This is a SciAm article about praising kids for intelligence vs. praising for hard work:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84655

Net result: kids praised for their intelligence tend to look for things that are easy or to appear smart. Challenges and mistakes often de-motiviate these kids. "Smart"-oriented kids tend to have an attitude where intelligence is a fixed, natural attribute and being able to accomplish something easily is a sign of natural intelligence. "Growth"-oriented kids tend to have an attitude that intelligence can grow and that challenges and mistakes are opportunities to learn. These kids tend to relish challenges, often getting even more excited over difficult problems.

I think that sums up LISP and C with regards to the brilliantly unaccomplished.

Being able to trivially do something in LISP that is difficult in C is good ... yet for someone who relishes a challenge, what does that mean to find a really hard problem in LISP that is nearly impossible in C?

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