Re: Using Emacs for business

[Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>]

* Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> [2021-06-17 02:00]:
> If you care about money, you should learn a language with
> a strong presence in the commercial and business world.
> Python is such a language and Python also has very fast devel
> time, where even a beginner programmer in Python can get
> pretty advanced stuff up-and-running in one or two weeks
> or so.

Any language is like that. There is nothing so special about any
language, I could do it. Emacs Lisp has a main advantage of being
bundled with the editor and thus has nice ready made interfaces. For
example, I would not like re-inventing the editor. I think that is
main feature of it.

> Lisp on the other hand has some footing in the university and CS
> world but even there it isn't so widespread anymore, and as for the
> business world it is very, very uncommon compared to other
> languages.

What is common or not, that matters maybe for people who apply with
companies to get employed. If you do programming for yourself, you may
do it in any language you wish and mixture of languages. The place and
time I started to learn programming taught me that each computer user
is asked to rather program whatever is necessary, and I still keep
that opinion today. We may observe plethora of passive computer
users who don't even think of learning programming. We started
learning it with maybe 7-8 years without computer just by answering
programming quiz questions in children's magazines.

Any language there is may be good for almost anything. I would be
using Icon or Unicon as one of choices, or Racket.

Unicon Programming — Unicon Programming v0.6.148
http://btiffin.users.sourceforge.net/up/index.html

Icon (programming language) - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon_(programming_language)

The Icon Programming Language
https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/icon/

> Development time in Lisp is also much slower than in Python and
> there are other disadvantages as well from a business point of view

I cannot judge about that, not that I have made the experience, so I
have nothing to compare to. Though I remember times when I was a
proponent of this or that programming language. Technically there are
many reasons, practically is what matters. I wish I could just tell to
computer to do what I mean, but we are not yet there.

> for example try googling a problem you just encountered in Lisp,

With googling you mean searching Internet? I don't use Google, mostly
other search engines.  And I consider good books or manuals more
valuable than online searches for solutions to specific practical
problems. Within Logo programming language context I have been using
Lisp in that sense since long time and it helped me later switch from
Perl to Lisp (what a relief). It was breeze to learn Common Lisp,
first books were the Gigabook and Common Lisp Cookbook. But I don't
like the instability of packages as this or that package would work
with this or that implementation... too complex. Sooner or later I
will move everything to Emacs Lisp, then later who knows... Boredom
causes me to re-write programs.

> then do the same in Python, in Python you get tons of quality hits
> instantly, in Lisp, for an uncommon problem you might not get a
> single one,

You see, with Lisp I have not have the same urge to search as whatever
I needed was there, my experience is different. Things that may be
harder to find are cryptographic functions to be compatible to
previous language or some external libraries like those related to
email sending or processing and database access. Emacs has it about
all.

> Lisp also tends to be much more varied in terms of style which I
> think is a good thing, but the boss of a company don't like it since
> new employees must understand and get into code written by others,
> and so on. And there are more examples/reasons.

I knew you talk about slav... sorry, employee - boss relations. So in
that case both are guided by what is popular and not what is
practical. It is corrupt and brainwashed world. Almost any kind of
Lisp is just find, including other languages, any is fine. Forth would
be just fine language for anything. Icon, any kind is fine as long as
the language can technically satisfy the need. Brainstorming is a
process that may result with quite nice results and both bosses and
slav...sorry, employees should participate in such. Just that world is
not so friendly obviously. 

A government contract somewhere provided requirements to create a
database of people and it was for a fat price many months project that
in reality could be finished in a single day would those programmes
know that technical requirements are already met with some other tools
or languages. So they re-wrote whatever already existed from
scratch. Reminds me much of the today's Org Mode which would like to
be a relational database.

If language gives you results, that is it. Using few languages is
fine, if it gives result, go and use it. Any language may be good. I
think everybody should learn programming, it should be part of
elementary school curriculum.


-- 
Jean

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