Revenge of the nerds

This post will be again programming language named Lisp, this time is a reading of Paul Graham.

So, in this reading, it is mentioned important things you have to take in mind before you create something, in this case an example of programming languages. The author says that if you want to create something new that already exists and if you want to sell, you are trying to have success because you believe that your invention has something that highlights between the others.

When you want to enter to the red oceans (ideas that already exists and that you want to fight against other companies for the clients), it is important that your product really satisfies the requirements and (this is the important part) to have something that makes the difference between your product and the competitor´s ideas. And that’s because if you create something that already exists, why the clients will buy something that your competitors already give them.

My point of that is to show why Lisp begin to grow when it was launched. When Lisp was created, it had nine ideas that marked the difference with the other programming languages. The author listed

Conditionals

Function type

Recursion

Dynamic typing

Garbage-collection

Programs composed of expressions

Symbol types

Notation for code using trees of symbols and constants

A language which you can compile while you can read, read while compiling and read at runtime.

Nowadays we have a lot of language that have some of the elements mentioned before, but when Lisp was launched, other languages didn´t had some or all of them. So it´s clear what Lisp´s creators made to mark the difference between other programming languages and Lisp. And this advice is not only for the creation of a new programming language, you can use it for anything where you have client competitors.