Back when cafes were open, I met an enthusiastic programmer who wanted to tell me how awesome the Clojure language is. While that is a sentiment with which I can wholeheartedly agree, I found it ironic that this programmer seemed not to realize that I had used Lisp as my primary language for 15 years of my career. It reminded me of this Johnny Cash song:

so I wrote down these lyrics:

I was totin’ my laptop at a trendy Palo Alto cafe
When I passed a hacker bro’ with a new 16 inch display
“If you’re goin’ to be hacking, Mack, at my table you can rest”
And so I climbed into a seat and then I started up a test
He asked me if I’d programmed with the Clojure brand
And I said, “Listen, I’ve used every repl in this here land”

I’ve consed every pair, man
I’ve consed every pair, man
Signaled every err, man
I’ve done so much software, man
Of repls I’ve a’had my share, man
I’ve consed every pair

I’ve used Franz Lisp, LM Lisp, Common Lisp, PLT
MacLisp, ZetaLisp, Emacs Lisp, and Yale’s T
Vaxen, Explorer, Symbolics, PDP
Sun station, PC, MacBook, Blackberry
Racket, Pyret, JScheme, R7
R6, R5, R4, I’m in heaven

I’ve consed every pair, man
I’ve consed every pair, man
Signaled every err, man
I’ve done so much software, man
Of repls I’ve a’had my share, man
I’ve consed every pair

I’ve used deftype, ftype, machine-type, define
lisp-type, typecase, check-type, read-line
class-name, class-of, defclass, load-time
base-string, write-string, string-trim, run-time
make-list, make-hash, make-node, string-make
make-array, display, two-way, for Pete’s sake

I’ve consed every pair, man
I’ve consed every pair, man
Signaled every err, man
I’ve done so much software, man
Of repls I’ve a’had my share, man
I’ve consed every pair

I’ve used arrayp, boundp, minusp, iterator
constantp, equalp, typep, numerator
bit-nor, vector, ffloor, butlast,
special or, xor, err-or, broadcast,
truncate, conjugate, concatenate, package-error,
allocate, update, random-state, what a terror.

I’ve consed every pair, man
I’ve consed every pair, man
Signaled every err, man
I’ve done so much software, man
Of repls I’ve a’had my share, man
I’ve consed every pair