[lbo-talk] Another computer great passes: John McCarthy RIP

[// ravi]

On Oct 27, 2011, at 9:24 PM, // ravi wrote:
> Nor do I think that people need to know lambda calculus or monads to program in Lisp. I have programmed in Lisp. I was terrible at it, admittedly. I knew the lambda calculus, but not because of CS or Lisp, but I did not know most of the other terms that are tossed about. What I did say was that such concepts and jargon enter early and are emphasised in the literature, just as a whole slew of terms and concepts confront a novice programmer when it comes to OO programming.

The above is what I meant, when I wrote “users don’t need to talk about”, in an earlier post:

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Imperative languages are successful because they are intuitive. Users don’t need to talk about the lambda calculus (poor old Church, one of my idols) or monads or immutability, i.e., they do not need an advanced degree in CS, to do imperative programming. They can literally hit the ground running.
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YMMV.

	—ravi