The Idea of Lisp
It&#x27;s interesting, I&#x27;m reading Black Swan at the moment by Nassim Taleb, and one of his big rants is about how we get blinded by idealized, platonic forms and ideas when the real world is messy and inherently unpredictable. E.g. trying to explain the forms of nature with platonic archetypal shapes like circles, rectangles and triangles. Lisp and the community around it kinda has that flavor - getting lost in a world of &quot;pure forms&quot; and grand ideas, but downplaying the important but messy practical reality of hardware, useful libraries, and getting cool stuff done with a minimum of fuss. I&#x27;m periodically fascinated by Lisp (I wrote an interpreter or two in C) but I wonder if its &quot;Platonicity&quot; is part of its downfall.