You cannot clarify what I have said.  Acquire precision in communication.

| You wrote a 1-liner to me that I didn't respond to, but you make big
| claims here that should be responded to.

  It appears less than likely that you have been willing to think about
  them.

| For people who don't want to read all of this, mainly Erik considers free
| software to be a failure.

  People can read what I wrote just fine on their own.  But it is quite
  interesting to see that you have missed the point so completely.  The
  point here is not some absolutist "success" vs "failure" mode.  The point
  here is to encourage people to think about the successfulness in light of
  its actual achievements.  You fail to address that point, but think that
  listing success stories is all it takes to rebut some non-argument about
  failure that nobody ever made.  You mention "straw man", so there is some
  reason to suspect that you know what you have just erected and shot down
  entirely on your own.  The question is whether it /helps/ anyone that
  software is "free".  This is not rebuttable with a few simple examples.
  I would have thought that such should be fairly obvious, but apparently
  not.

| So what goal does Erik think free software failed in?  Compensation of
| the programmer, most likely.  The old critique.

  The extent of your failure to exercise your brain is quite alarming.  If
  I hooked up electronics and sensors to it to test its activity, the
  result could most probably only be used to calibrate the equipment.

| People are still feeling around how to maneuver with free software.

  This much is true.

| And consider the burden is relative -- is it harder than forking a
| commercial project?  Do all companies listen to their users' requests and
| patches?  Do some companies have licenses shutting off your use of the
| software after a certain time?

  The point was to encourage people to think about such questions.  Instead
  you just ask and do not think.  Oddly amusing.  

| To many of its participants, free software is new.  Maybe the issues are
| not new to academia, but many don't have access to those lessons.  So a
| lot of mistakes and learning have to be made.

  One point is precisely that free software is not better than many of the
  extant alternatives.  Having to learn every lesson from scratch because
  people are ignorant does not seem to be a winning counter-argument.

| I don't think many people believe that Stallman is the world's best
| project menager.  I've heard mumblings about this from Icaza, maybe Jim
| Blandy, and a few others who feel a bit burned.  I read all the emails on
| jwz's site about the XEmacs schism.  I don't think Stallman was capable
| of communicating himself to the Lucid team, though I personally rooted
| for him.

  You do seem to have a curious knack for discussing people instead of
  ideas.

| Knowing that many companies simply die because of management problems, is
| free software so badly off in this sense?

  My question is whether it actually /helps/ and /solves any problems/.  If
  it is no better than the alternatives it is supposedly better than, that
  is a clear symptom of missing the boat or at least exaggerated claims.

| Yup, that's the hard part.

  I was not talking about money.  I talked about rewards.  It is curious
  indeed that you do not seem to know of any other rewards than money.
  Part of the charm with free software is its capacity for non-taxable means
  of reward which would essentially double the value of the reward.  This
  part is underexplored, to put it mildly.

| It's like saving money for a rainy day.  I think a grandparent who fought
| for these rights should smack you over the head (metaphorically) for not
| guarding your resources.  Don't be unnecessarily dependent.  Be
| sustainable and deal with others as economic equals.

  But does free software /help/ or /hinder/ in applying this sage advice?
  /That/ is the question I would like you to think about.  Again, I can
  only regret that it did not seem to work very well.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

yes, some programs don't believe in users and their faithless drudgery in
forcing their dominion over other programs deprives the sky of the i/o signal.
cursed and recursed, this abstracted interception; hearsed and rehearsed, this
purposeless interdiction.  byte written but bit rotten, will your free program
be so misbegotten?   what is good and what is not good?!!!

Anonymous functions are defined using lambda and local functions are
defined using flet or labels. macrolet allows local macros to be created.

As you have realised, due to separate namespaces it is necessary to signal
which namespace is being accessed. #' is an abbreviation for function. For
example (mapcar #'(lambda (x) (1+ x)) '(1 2 3)) returns (2 3 4).

Note that (mapcar (lambda (x) (1+ x)) '(1 2 3)) also works, because lambda
returns a function.

But if you tried to do this with a regular function:

(defun test (x) (1+ x))

(mapcar test '(1 2 3))

*** - EVAL: variable test has no value

Then you tried to access the non-function namespace, which is currently
undefined. We have to make sure the function namespace is accessed:

(mapcar #'test '(1 2 3))

Or longhand:

(mapcar (function test) '(1 2 3))

[what is the official term for the non-function namespace? Variable
namespace?]

I want to start using path.lisp to help make my code portable across
implementations.

There sure are a significant number of implementations.

I don't see the point of such a small language given continued
improvements in computer resources. But with decent libraries Scheme will
go far. I've just been looking at the enormous SLIB library:
http://swissnet.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/SLIB.html

This appears to implement a lot of Common Lisp. It even provides t and
nil, which was removed from Scheme in R4RS!

   1.5.6.2 Legacy

   The following procedures were present in Scheme until R4RS (see section
   \Language changes " in Revised(4) Scheme). They are provided by all
   SLIB implementations.

   t Constant
   Defined as #t.

   nil Constant
   Defined as #f.

I bet there's one heck of a story behind that.

--
Piers

Thanks for the responses.  It has been interesting, I have no idea
what you're getting at, and maybe the most interesting things are the
least rational.

It seems like this is largely a political issue.  If you want to make
changes to the code, and you want to do this in a way that your changes
get incorporated (as an option) into the standard distribution, and you
want anyone making future changes to the system to consider the fact
that you have written this modification package, then GNU is not where
you want to do this, because FSF is strongly political and controlling
about its projects.

I'm not sure that makes Gnu software only "supposedly free".  That's
true only to the extent that your goals are political, involving *their*
software, as well as technical.

That's also assuming you don't intend every to sell what you do to it
yourself, or that they're using the lesser GPL.  I can definitely agree
that the GPL itself makes software licensed under it not truly free, as
it hamstrings what you can do with it -- "Whatever you want, as long as
rms thinks it's kosher".  

Michael

Cheers

--
Piers

Works quite fine here

  Not for production purposes.  I do not think I will want to do that.  I
  would rather hire cheap programmers who can write Java code than do it
  myself, but I actually believe it is a good language for its purposes and
  I have read a lot on Java.  I want to program in Common Lisp, not Java,
  myself, but if I were to hire a bunch of people to get something done, I
  would want them to use something that was not braindamaged like C++ and
  which I could be reasonably sure was not all buggy like C programs are.

| Maybe the Java way is a worse fit to my brain than it is to most peoples,
| but I find the standard libraries sometimes get in the way to the extent
| that it might be easier to just reimplement what I want in a less-crazy
| manner.

  Well, people should not use tools that do not fit the way they think.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

In fact I wonder if Trudeau was half-quoting Oats?

Since the Java language is easier to learn than C++, less skilled
people can get involved more quickly. The average Java programmer may
be less skilled than the average C++ programmer, but since it's harder
to make grave mistakes in Java, the danger balances out.

Conversely, the C++ language is harder to learn than Java, so it takes
a greater commitment and more time to get involved. The average C++
programmer may be more skilled than the average Java programmer, but
it's easier to make grave mistakes in C++, so the gain balances out.

I prefer C++'s difficulty because intense attention to detail can
ensure a safe and correct program, but with Java there's a higher
level of non-beneficial abstraction (the VM) below which one cannot
penetrate. If I write a seemingly-correct Java program and it doesn't
perform properly, there is less I can do about it. (Or, maybe, I don't
know the tools well enough to investigate and overcome problems with
the libraries and VM.)

Also, the "knowledge ceiling" with C++ is higher than with Java. After
programming in Java for a couple of years, I felt that there wasn't
much left to learn about it apart from cataloging its ever-growing
libraries. I couldn't do much to become a better Java /programmer/; I
could only become a better Java /librarian/. C++ invites seemingly
perpetual investment and does reward this effort.

Arguably my preference is based more on the desire to learn than to
"just get work done." It's depressing to start learning about
something new, only to find too quickly that there's nothing left to
learn. That is, hitting that "knowledge ceiling" too soon only leads
to boredom and disinterest. C++ keeps my interest where Java could
not. Common Lisp appears to offer a similarly high "ceiling" (perhaps
with much earlier reward). Hence my interest here.

--
Piers

  This is unfair.  If I want to make something, /anything/, look great, I
  would take Perl, HTML, sendmail.cf, George W. Bush, Microsoft, etc, and
  voilà! it is great.  Since I have good friends (or at least one) who has
  claimed quite strongly that C++ is not as bad as it was when I made a
  serious effort to learn it back in 1993/4 and then made a serious effort
  to build a second carreer as a writer just to make sure that if I should
  be "forced" to program in C++, I would at least have a way out, I refuse
  to go below "braindamaged" for C++.  The other things listed above are
  willfully evil and destructive.  I want to say "well, at least it is not
  braindamaged" instead of "well, at least it is not evil".

| I suspect that you would very quickly develop a much less charitable
| opinion of Java if you had to write some production code in it.

  Part of the point with Java is that it is supposed to be a good language
  for average programmers.  I think most of its detractors forget that you
  sometimes have to hire mediocre people.  Just by watching our excellent
  forum here, I have to conclude that if you are less than a great thinker,
  you will only do serious damage in Common Lisp.  The people who voice
  their concerns here are probably /way/ above the average of those who are
  likely to play with Common Lisp.  I could perhaps hire the people who
  have spent less than three months shedding their Scheme attitude, their
  arrogance, their unwillingness to actually /learn/ something new, and
  their unwillingness to work hard at making themselves better.  But I have
  no great hopes for the ability to hire a /bunch/ of people from some funny
  farm with academic credentials.  The crop of "computer scientists" these
  days has been drawn from the middle of the Gauss curve, with so little
  sign of excellence and real talent that it would simply be /wrong/ to base
  an operation on intelligent, thinking, creative, /good/ programmers.

  Java is the blue-collar programming language, much more successfully so
  than C++, which had strong aspirations in that direction, but is much too
  complex for its intended users.  Java can only be judged on those terms,
  and when you do that, two things become clear: If you are smarter than
  the target audience, you will hate the language and miss an opportunity
  to make use of the enormous number of lesser people who can be told what
  to do and actually accomplish it, and if you are in the target audience,
  it may be the first programming language that is actually intended to be
  understood by your "grade" of people and all the educational material is
  squarly directed at your group.

  Furthermore, you can now determine if a university or vocational college
  is going to produce brilliant or only educated average people by looking
  at their choice in programming language.  It used to be relatively stupid
  languages like Pascal and relatively smart languages like Scheme, but now
  we can know beforehand if they believe they can do something great with
  any potentially brilliant student who decides to attend.  If they choose
  to base their education on Java, they will at best produce highly skilled
  workers, not thinkers.  But highly skilled programmers is much better
  than poorly skilled thinkers.  There are significant benefits to actually
  having had to use a language for average programmers, even if you can do
  much better, just as we force even bright kids through schools intended
  to feed factories with average workers.  This may sound brutal, but I have
  yet to see any alternatives that have a significant chance of success.

  /Really/ good people tend to "discover" Common Lisp quite independently
  of their formal education, but my take on this is that you cannot acquire
  the foundation to appreciate Common Lisp in today's programming world if
  you have not gone through a lot of drudgery.

  Also, if you can make do with average people, you should be /thrilled/!
  It is a mark of maturity in an industry when average people can operate
  tools and accomplish something.  Java offers something important here.
  If you want to solve really hard problems, get the really good people and
  give them Common Lisp.  They will be equally /thrilled/ to get away from
  Java, if the sentiments here are accurate.

  The only problem I can see is that people cannot get programming work
  that is commensurate with their intelligence and skills.  This, however,
  is not Java's fault.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

  Definitely true.  Look at it this way: If people hit the ceiling without
  having to invest enormous amounts of time on idiotic stunts like C++
  forces you to, they have an incentive to move to a different language
  instead of wasting away at the braindamage that I still think C++ is at
  the level where it could become most interesting.

| That is, hitting that "knowledge ceiling" too soon only leads to boredom
| and disinterest.

  But you have acquired skills and an interest in improving your condition
  that is much more beneficial than staying with a language that exhibits
  diminishing returns for a constant increase in effort.

| C++ keeps my interest where Java could not.  Common Lisp appears to offer
| a similarly high "ceiling" (perhaps with much earlier reward).  Hence my
| interest here.

  This is excellent!  I am truly happy to see this and your rationale for
  it.  But it also tells me that Java is a better language than C++ because
  you /did/ leave for greener pastures instead of staying in C++.

  If a field gives you a feeling that "I can do better than this" and lets
  you move on, it gives you freedom.  If you get stuck there with a feeling
  that "with only a little more work, I can improve on this", it is only
  restricting and confining.  Therefore, I would much rather give people
  Java and tell them to call me when they are exhausted than give them C++
  and never hear from them because they vanish into a maze of templates and
  meta-class programming and whatnot.  People who are happy to become the
  best carpenter in town are a different breed than those who want more and
  go on to become architects and hire lots of other carpenters and do new
  and exciting things.  I tend to think that it cannot hurt to spend a few
  years actually building houses if you want to become an architect, and if
  you get credits for your experience when you want to return to school,
  that is the most beneficial way to reward real experience.

  Do you have an alternative model?

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

This mandates that the driver apply intense attention to the details
of driving, as any mistake leading to rapid deceleration leads to the
spike being driven through the driver's skull, with attendant
likelihood of pain, injury, or even death.

Overly uncareful and aggressive drivers would thereby be removed from
the "gene pool" and the public roads, thereby assuring improved safety
for all those that remain.

  Is there a single problem that would not be solved by removing people?

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway