Revenge of the Nerds


The article “Revenge of the Nerds” has been written by Paul Graham in 2002.

I want to start this comment by citing the author: « You can't let the suits make technical decisions for you. ». This sentence sums up very well the thoughts of the author in this article. The author mostly talks about the power of programming languages and indeed most people do not know the different features of the programming languages and that they cannot solve the same kind of problem.


One of the biggest mistakes of the high-level people in software companies is that they sometimes make decisions according to the actual trend instead of finding the best technology and have an optimal solution to develop their application. They also think that choosing one of the most famous programming languages, like java for example, will be an advantage for the project because everyone knows how to code in Java and it will be easy to replace programmers if necessary. This solution may seem more confortable and reassuring but in fact, it is not: it is better to use a powerful language than a famous language less powerful to develop a complex and qualified application. A factor that can explain why people do not choose less famous languages: the cost of the development is higher (the community of programmers is reduced, so it’s harder to find the qualified developers). In response, the author say that “software is best developed by teams of less than ten people ». In that case, the cost will be not so high. Furthermore, the cost of the development is also link to the length of a program: more the program is long, more the cost is high because it will take more time to develop it. So the best decision to make is to choose a powerful language (like Lisp) and a small team of qualified programmers to develop programs very short and then limit the cost of the development. Finally, if programmers create a new language it is because the other programming languages do not respond to their needs.

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