quotes

http://www.neverreadpassively.com/2009_11_01_archive.html

# LISP. Frankly, if you're a programmer you will eventually come to realise LISP is awesome. Although I've started my pilgrimage, I am a long way from mastering, let alone being productive in a dialect. I need to stop dancing around and either build something big and real in the language or to work through a book end-to-end (practical common lisp of course). Both of these strategies have worked for me before in rapidly acquiring new languages. I was thinking of dedicating the Christmas break to one of these tasks, we'll see...

Stackoverflow. I consume a lot of podcasts during my commute and while running. I subscribe to itconversations, and occasionally a stackoverflow podcast will find it's way into my playlist. I just about always skip it. The guys maybe smart dudes, or a the very least write about interesting things on occasion, but they produce a really crap podcast. Anyway, their joint venture - the stackoverflow site - is a pretty kick ass programmer Q/A repository. I have not contributed to it at all, but I have started searching various keywords and tags and I think I could contribute a lot, some of which might even be coherent or useful. What's holding me back is the investment. Each answer would be about the same investment as would be required for a small wikipedia entry (which I've been known to write). My problem is whether or not there is any return on that investment (as I think there is with wikipedia). Is it ego-fulfilling research (like making a slashdot/reddit/hackernews comment) or is it truly a contribution to the a community (however niche)?