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How come?


The language is fine. The framework is not.

It has the appearance of being free and open, but a lot of the framework is not and has aggressive licenses.

It's easy to creep into those bits unintentionally via ignorance or dependency and then you're stuck with the vendor's extensions (MS) which are hard to shake.

(I've been a C# developer since pre-beta days so I'm fairly experienced at getting shot by these things).

Java is pretty much open, there are several implementations and most components in their stacks and application stacks on top are 100% pluggable (including J2EE). The same is not the case for anything which involves WCF, ASP.Net etc.

Ideally ANSI common lisp would be better as there are several competing implementations and one core standard.


Don't think that starting with lisp is going to cut it for a "Software Engineering" - type track. Took a CS level "functional programming" class however as part of my Software Engineering track and it has made my life all the more better...


I'd recommend to hire someone from an all-functional-languages school over a .NET or Java school. I would be confident that they would find things like Java or Python very easy.


Well it depends if the students want general purpose knowledge or knowledge that will earn them cash quickly.

Common lisp isn't all that functional TBH (it can be if you want it to be though)


Not all of us run Windows. I used Linux through my whole degree. Luckily my CS program was very good about very rarely requiring closed source or windows only software. There was only once, for some software engineering course, that I had to go down to the lab and use their machines. I think the homework was required to be done in Visio or something like that.


Definitely see your point. During my time in college I only used Linux also. Now I work for a niche company where using C# allows us to get a lot done very quickly for the size of the company, and it's efficiency for getting stuff done is amazing. I love how great it is for completing stuff, but does suck not being able to use on any platform.

That being said unless it's just a quick hack for myself I tend to stray from C# due to it not being usable on all platforms.




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