Beating the averages

Beating the Averages

Beating the Averages is an article –written by Paul Graham– which explains how the the first web app was created.

The writer explains that one of the essential part was the language that they would use. Thew were extremely proficient using Lisp. Even though everyone was using C or some other low-level language, they decided to stick with Lisp cause they knew the language all the way around and this would help releasing new features really fast. When you use the language you’re most comfortable with or when you are writing new code, it takes a lot of time to lookup some information like “How to do ___ in language ____”. This type of searches become more and more often the more you are unfamiliar with the language. When you need speed, this is not the best way to go.

When you are beginning a startup, what language to use is one of the hardest things to do. You  know that using some languages or technologies will make the development easier to make for certain functions. However, any language can be used, and it may be required to do some extra research. That extra research time is the one you need to minimize.

The writer has a theory about the language we are more comfortable with, he calls it The Blub paradox. He calls Blub the language a person is more familiar with. So when you’re programming and doing some stuff in other language, programmer will often turn back to see Blub and notice that it lacks features. One last advice from author was to learn Lisp as a language, not because you’re actually gonna use it. You may not even use it but it makes your reasoning and coding skills improve.

All this advices are really nice to have. Most of the time, when you think of starting your own project, you’re not sure on what language to choose or start on and you should just stick to the one you’re more comfortable with.