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Boilerplate code says a lot about a language... (lispy.wordpress.com)

6 points by lisporama ↗ HN
"That's the important point: the difference between merely implementing something in a language and embedding something in a language so that you don't lose the original power of the language. Lisp is a lousy language for doing any particular problem; what it's good for is figuring out the right language that you want and embedding that in Lisp. That's the real power to this approach to design." -- Hal Abelson

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hga
The AntiPatterns book says (without citation, although this seems to match my personal observations) that only 1 in 5 programmers "get" abstraction.

This has a lot of implications; they pointed out the one for "democratic" design processes (those with a clue get outvoted, thus the architecture of so many systems is garbage), but this obviously extends to this "LISP is a ball of mud" (Moses) approach of designing and implementing a small language in which to program most of your stuff.

And in any language. LISP is used as an example since this is its natural style of use and it's lot easier, but if you can't get the proper abstractions agreed upon in the first place, it matters little how good or bad the language you'll then try to implement them in, boiler plate style or LISP....