Re: What design is: 911 vs. Fleetwood

[Paul Graham <address@hidden>]

Oversteer was something that was not a problem for race
car drivers but threw novices (literally) for a loop.
I think the equivalent for Lisp generally would be its
syntax.

People always used to claim that Lisp was slow, but I
think what really scared average users was the way code
looked.  Saying it was slow just seemed (possibly even
in their own minds) a more legitimate excuse for not
using it.

I'm not sure how scary Arc's eventual syntax will look.
Right now it's all s-expressions, because we're still
working on the core semantics.

--pg

--- Ken Williams <kwilliam@northernlight.com> wrote:
> Paul Graham writes:
> 
>  > The result is that the dufuses often end up using a
>  > language that wasn't designed for them, often with
>  > disastrous results.  Something similar happened with
>  > the Porsche 911.  It was basically a racing car.  The
>  > serious car people loved it.  The dufuses noticed this
>  > and so they wanted 911s too, which was a problem 
>  > because the car had major oversteer.  A lot of wannabees 
>  > got killed as a result.  
> 	...
> 
>  > Our plan for Arc is, design the Porsche 911.  If you do
>  > that, eventually all the drug dealers will want it too, 
>  > even though the Cadillac Fleetwood was the car designed
>  > for them.
> 
> So, what exactly is the "oversteer" problem in Arc?  Continuations,
> perhaps?
> 
> ++ Ken Williams
> 
> 


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