51.1 - Programming Bottom-Up (Paul Graham)
So, when I made my previous post, I was thinking about primarily books. I will endeavor to increase the number of books I read but this past week I realized that I shouldn't limit my reading plan to only books. There's a lot of important writing out on the web that's not published in books. During this past week I came across Paul Graham's website and on that website is a list of essays. Part of my plan is to go through this list starting at the bottom.
I became aware of Paul Graham by reading his book Hackers and Painters. I bought the book in an airport bookstore to read on the plane. His point of view and style of writing really engaged me and the plane flight seemed much shorter than normal. It a book that really inspired a lot of thinking (similar to the reaction I have reading Alistair Cockburn).
This particular essay talks about top-down vs. bottom-up programming Graham makes the point that Lisp allows you to add to the language from the bottom up. This allows the functionality that you build from the top down simpler. You kind of meet the real essence of your program in the middle. I like this mental model and while I was reading it I kept thinking that the bottom-up part sounds a lot like using libraries or frameworks. Graham himself makes that point at the end of the essay but he also adds that Lisp gives you "broader powers" than using libraries. Never having done any serious work in Lisp, I'm not exactly sure what that feels like. It did make me think of Forth, which I have programmed in before (albeit about 18 years ago).
7:58:26 PM 
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