Academia is like page-rank: your value is defined by what everybody else thinks of you. And what you think of everybody else contributes to (or subtracts from!) their net academic worth. It is a closed hermetic self-referential system. The commercial value system is obviously different: it's all about money. In a way this is similar to page-rank as well. The difference is that the money comes from outside the community, from customers.
and a few other PLT morsels that might interest LtUers.
William Cook was the prinicpal lead for creating AppleScript. His HOPL paper was discussed on LtU before but I can't currently find the reference.
Previous discussion about AppleScript here.