[plt-scheme] Perplexed Programmers

> > The real tragedy of the past 20 years is not that the Lisp Machine
> > didn't grow by two orders of magnitude (cue obligatory joke about
> > global warming) but that the Programmer's Apprentice didn't.
>
> If you replace the last "didn't" with "did" on this list
> then I like your statement and it expresses a good sentiment
> on this list.

I really did mean "didn't".  That is, I think it is a tragedy that we
are not farther along in terms of building a Programmer's Apprentice.

I completely agree w/ Erich.  Academics are largely bozos when it
comes to practicing their own craft.  Here's an excerpt from a recent
blog post I wrote:

  Software engineers love to sit around tables and complain about how
  nobody values their work. It's true, too: people will happily pay
  for physically tangible resources but always expect software to be
  cheap or free, even if it's much more complex and difficult to
  engineer than the physical object. So you would think that a
  software engineering conference, of all things, would appreciate the
  value of software and be willing to spend a little money to save a
  lot of time and effort down the road.

  As you can guess by the very existence of this entry, you would be
  spitting-in-your-soup wrong. They've saved themselves a pocketful of
  change by using the free version of CyberChair (not a great
  conference manager even in its commercial version, but that's a
  story for another day), but in the process they've bought the
  program committee a right-royal headache.

http://notes-from-a-sticky-wicket.blogspot.com/2007/06/software-engineers-who-dont-value.html

Shriram