I really detest the use of the word "training" in relation to professional activities. Training is what you do to dogs. What you should be doing with people is educating them, not training them. There is a big, big difference.

很久没有感慨了，因为看淡了。不过刚看完的这篇文章，还是让我感慨了一下。
Lisping at JPL

Lisp在JPL最辉煌时候是“深度空间1号”（DS1）探测任务。飞船的主控系统（RA）是一个Lisp程序。
RA was written entirely in Common Lisp despite unrelenting political pressure to move to C++. At one point an attempt was made to port one part of the system (the planner) to C++. This attempt had to be abandoned after a year. Based on this experience I think it's safe to say that if not for Lisp the Remote Agent would have failed.

在任务的执行过程中，还远程Debug了一个多线程的Race Condition Bug。
Debugging a program running on a $100M piece of hardware that is 100 million miles away is an interesting experience. Having a read-eval-print loop running on the spacecraft proved invaluable in finding and fixing the problem.
RA被评为"NASA Software of the Year"。

然后因为一句话。。。
Lisp was dead, at least at JPL.

然后作者在Google工作了一年。
One of the reasons I stayed at JPL for twelve years was that I was appalled at what the software industry had become. The management world has tried to develop software engineering processes that allow people to be plugged into them like interchangeable components. The "interface specification" for these "components" usually involves a list of tools in which an engineer has received "training." (I really detest the use of the word "training" in relation to professional activities. Training is what you do to dogs. What you should be doing with people is educating them, not training them. There is a big, big difference.)

作者讨厌Java，去Google的原因是因为Google貌似没有使用Java。然而很不幸。。。
So of course you can guess what my first assignment was: lead the inaugural Java development at the company, what eventually became Google AdWords.

作者也试图在Google推广Lisp，呃。。。
Me:  I'd like to talk to you about something...
Him: Let me guess - you want to use Smalltalk.
Me:  Er, no...
Him: Lisp?
Me: Right.
Him:  No way.

Lisp在Google也死了，然而。。。
In retrospect I am not convinced that he made the wrong decision. The interchangeable component model of software engineers seemed to work reasonably well there. It's just not a business model in which I wish to be involved, at least not on the component-provider side. So after a year at Google I quit and returned to JPL.
呃，上面这段也是我不在感慨的原因。

作者回到JPL后的工作。。。
My job today (I am now working on software verification and validation) is to solve problems that can be traced directly back to the use of purely imperative langauges with poorly defined semantics like C and C++. (The situation is a little better with Java, but not much.)
I can't even say the word Lisp without cementing my reputation as a crazy lunatic who thinks Lisp is the Answer to Everything. So I keep my mouth shut (mostly) and watch helplessly as millions of tax dollars get wasted.
In the words of Elton John: It's sad. So sad. It's a sad, sad situation. My best hope at this point is that the dotcom crash will do to Java what AI winter did to Lisp, and we may eventually emerge from "dotcom winter" into a saner world. But I wouldn't bet on it.

呃，以上、我的又一次感慨。

I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - J. D. Salinger, 麦田里的守望者
or should I? - 笑い男