Re: Y Store now C++

[Michael Vanier <address@hidden>]

> Date: 25 Feb 2003 03:48:49 -0000
> From: Paul Graham <pg@archub.org>
> 
> I should mention that they actually have just done this.  A 
> rewritten version (C++ and Perl) just launched in Jan.  
> However,
> 
> (a) The reason they rewrote it was entirely that the 
> current engineers didn't understand Lisp and were too
> afraid to learn it. 
> 
> (b) The resulting program is a new world's record case
> of Greenspun's Tenth Rule.  The Yahoo Store Editor called
> compile at runtime on s-expressions made on the fly.
> To translate this into C++ they literally had to write a
> Lisp interpreter.
> 

This is an interesting state of affairs.  We have engineers that are afraid
to learn lisp, but are not afraid to use a mock-lisp interpreter written in
C++.  I'm not sure whether to laugh or to cry.

Paul, are you just assuming they were afraid to learn lisp, or do you know
for sure that that was the reason?  I'd guess that another reason was that
they were afraid they wouldn't be able to find good lisp programmers to
maintain it.

Mike