"Often this kind of student never makes it to the end. He flunks himself by dropping out. He ends on a soda fountain or doing yard work, but all the time reading and studying because a good mind is always hungry.
Now one of the things about Lisp, and I've seen it before, is that Lisp is a real magnet for this kind of mind. Once you understand that, and see that it is this kind of mind that has contributed a lot to the culture of Lisp, you begin to see why Lisp is, like many of its proponents, a brilliant failure. It shares the peculiar strengths and weaknesses of the brilliant bipolar mind (BBM).
Why is this? Well, its partly to do with vision. The 'vision thing' as George Bush Snr. once described it, is really one of the strengths of the BBM. He can see far; further than in fact his strength allows him to travel. He conceives of brilliant ambitious projects requiring great resources, and he embarks on them only to run out of steam. It's not that he's lazy; its just that his resources are insufficient."
I can't seem to find where it originates, but there's a frequently mentioned saying to the effect of: the optimally productive person is really smart but not so smart that they see too much of the big picture, because that's paralyzing, unless perhaps you manage to get yourself a job as a McLuhan-style public intellectual, or a novelist. Someone in an HN thread somewhere hypothesized that that might be related to the "Ballmer peak" in productivity after a beer or two, because alcohol sort of dulls the insight a little.
I think there's three groups. There's "smart enough", which is your fairly high-output productive person who gets shit done and may be somewhat dulled to the fact that the world is insane. (I wouldn't call them optimal but they're very handy to have around.) Then there's "too smart for your own good" which is as you and the article describe, seeing all the BS everywhere and feeling paralyzed and recognizing your own limitations (whether for how much BS you can put up with or even sharp intelligence barriers--it's not always too-big-an-increase in difficulty per se that kills a Lisper in college, but a dramatic increase in the amount of required BS to plow through to get anything done or get an acceptable grade). I don't think the monetary future for that kind of person is necessarily bleak, though, at least in the present times. There are so many startups you can join if you're smart enough to do even a little Lisp programming on the side, or you can start your own, you can also "float around" pretty easily and if you're lucky you'll get caught with a winner.
But then there's "John von Neumann" smart. I'd even lump the modest-in-comparison John Carmack in that distribution (not at the top end of course but I think he's earned a spot there), Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy too, along with a bunch of other relatively modern figures like Linus. These mythical people are worth at least 20 of the first group, and maybe 5-10 of the second group on the second group's good days. This third group can make the second group's lives even more depressing, since someone in the second group is smart enough to see and understand what they might have been if they had only slightly better brains.
Now one of the things about Lisp, and I've seen it before, is that Lisp is a real magnet for this kind of mind. Once you understand that, and see that it is this kind of mind that has contributed a lot to the culture of Lisp, you begin to see why Lisp is, like many of its proponents, a brilliant failure. It shares the peculiar strengths and weaknesses of the brilliant bipolar mind (BBM).
Why is this? Well, its partly to do with vision. The 'vision thing' as George Bush Snr. once described it, is really one of the strengths of the BBM. He can see far; further than in fact his strength allows him to travel. He conceives of brilliant ambitious projects requiring great resources, and he embarks on them only to run out of steam. It's not that he's lazy; its just that his resources are insufficient."