Very interesting article indeed. Some more interesting snippets (emphasized mostly by me: "Over and over again, I felt "Yeah! I am _good_ at this!" ... All around me were people who felt the same way, who were *competent and intelligent and caring* about each their own fields, and we could talk about and study each other's work and share information and sit down together and solve problems bigger than each of us could deal with alone. For every hardware or software product, there are enthusiasts: wild, untamed, uncontrollable people who overflow with excitement that "normal" people have no way to understand. It is that _excitement_ that sets us apart from the crowd. It is that _excitement_ that causes people to join free software and open source projects to give away their work to others of the same kind. This is why free software and open source are mostly developer-to-developer, because *only developers share their joy*. Users do not understand, they do not care, and they do not understand why we care. *The currency in the developer community is enthusiasm*. As a developer, you are not judged solely by your work, but by *how great you think it is*, what went into making it great, and for *your capacity to understand how great somebody else's work is*. All of the software tools on the Internet have a following behind them: People who _care_ and who are willing to help others who care. All languages have groups of dedicated people behind them that profess their love for their language .. they feel personally betrayed by incompetent, unintelligent, or careless people. But give them half a chance to prove otherwise, and developers *will love them again, forgiving and forgetting*, because they share the overall enthusiasm that drives us all. In fact, developer to developer, *we do not only expect enthusiasm, we demand it*. The demand for enthusiasm is a profound recognition of the competence, intelligence and caring that _must_ go into computer software. However, there is something _very_ seriously wrong with the Common Lisp community. People _in_ the community feel that it is perfectly OK to debase, denigrate, ridicule, denounce, disrespect, insult, defame, and smear Common Lisp. The desire to maintain a greatness is so powerful ... that they split whenever they need an incompatible feature. A new name is often chosen for the new language. Anything to keep people looking upwards and onwards. The new feature is great to those who follow it, and the old feature is great to those who stay. The enthusiasm that really helps improve a language is a love for it the way it is and has evolved so far, with an understanding and appreciation of its "momentum of evolution" so that any changes that are proposed seek to retain the users and the investments in it and does not splinter off into a different language and break with the past." Janko S, Sven Van Caekenberghe piše:
The following 10 year old Usenet article is quite interesting:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4563e504dba92253
Although it is quite long and partly about Common Lisp, its main point is that enthousiasm and positive energy are the main/natural currency among developers. I think that this is also the main driving force behind Pharo.
The author is Erik Naggum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum), a programmer and (in)famous, provocative participant to many discussions. He died a couple of years ago.
Sven
-- Janko Mivšek Aida/Web Smalltalk Web Application Server http://www.aidaweb.si