Espen Vestre <espen@*do-not-spam-me*.vestre.net> writes: > What is considered as polite is strongly flavoured by your cultural > background. > one should try to keep discourse at a polite level in an > international forum like this one.
I sense a contradiction here. There _is_ no "internationally polite" behavior, by what you said, so how can one use it?
-- -> -/ - Rahul Jain - \- <- -> -\ http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul -=- mailto:rj...@techie.com /- <- -> -/ "Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook \- <- -> -\ people if [they] try to walk around on their own. I really /- <- -> -/ wonder why XML does not." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp \- <- |--|--------|--------------|----|-------------|------|---------|-----|-| (c)1996-2002, All rights reserved. Disclaimer available upon request.
> > Please, notice that there are *two* different kinds of inadvertant > > name capture that Scheme macros avoid. Only one of them can be > > worked around using gensym at macro expansion time.
> > (I do understand that common lispers feel that the other kind does > > not occur very often or at all in their code. No need to point this > > out.)
> I think it's more accurate to say, that if it happens, it happens out > of intent, not accident, due to the package system. (assuming you're > talking about lexical shadowing of bindings to symbols that are used > in the macros.)
> I suppose it could happen out of accident, but that's like saying that > someone using floating point "accidentally" created an algorithm which > resulted in catastrophic cancellation. It's an accident caused by the > user not knowing how to use his tools.
Right. That's the "it's not a bug, it's a feature" line of reasoning.
Paul Dietz <paul.f.di...@motorola.com> writes: > Duane Rettig wrote:
> > Oops. I was wrong. Plists and alists do cons the same. I never think > > about it. I guess I would back off of my original statement and say > > that plists are represented with fewer parens, which could count as > > an aesthetic pro.
> Lookups in alists can be slightly faster on current hardware, > I think.
What's your theory?
-- Duane Rettig Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/ (www) 1995 University Ave Suite 275 Berkeley, CA 94704 Phone: (510) 548-3600; FAX: (510) 548-8253 du...@Franz.COM (internet)
Rahul Jain <rj...@sid-1129.sid.rice.edu> writes: > I sense a contradiction here. There _is_ no "internationally polite" > behavior, by what you said, so how can one use it?
Politeness is not one-bit. Need I say more? -- (espen)
Rahul Jain <rj...@sid-1129.sid.rice.edu> writes: > I never claimed it did. I claimed that _specific_ people did this kind > of thing, and for no reason I can figure out. Why can't people just > accept that CL and scheme have different design goals instead of > arguing that one community has the "right" or "wrong" goals. It's > either a goal you're interested in or one you're not interested in.
Well, I accept that they have different design goals, and I'm actually interested in *both* goals.
> But I think it's generally thought by Lispers that it's a shame that > plists and alists have different structure, and if it were to be done > over again, plists would have the alist structure. So you can't > destructure a plist easily, but except when actually dealing with plists, > you are advised in Common Lisp to use alists instead, in general.
* Janis Dzerins
> How do you come up with this stuff?
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG | Um, it's true. plists and alists have unfortunately different | representations, for historical reasons.
And from this you conclude the "shame" part? And this "unfortunately" part is so prejudicial it hurts.
| The alist representation is better (for one thing, it's just prettier, | but also, it allows for NIL properties).
What on earth are you talking about?
Neither properties named nil nor properties on the symbol nil are a problem:
(get 'nil 'nil 42) => 42 (setf (get 'nil 'nil) t) => t (get 'nil 'nil 42) => t
I think you should try to realize that you do not know these things and stop embarrassing yourself by posting more obviously clueless falsehood.
| plists are stuck with the first way, however, because there is just way | too much code that knows how they work.
Are you sure you are not confusing plist and alists? Are you confused by the fact that a nil in an alist is effectively ignored with any nil properties?
| But if you want to make your own assoc list, you always use the alist | representation and not the plist representation, with the exception of | what you store on actual symbols' plists.
Really? Did you know that you can use destructuring-bind to pick up a bunch of values from a plist, but that you have no such handy tool with alists?
(properties <whatever>) => (:root 'n :toot 'n :foo 47 :bar 11 :zot 'yeah)
(destructuring-bind (&key foo bar zot &allow-other-keys) (properties <whatever>) (values foo bar zot)) => 47 => 11 => 'yeah
I use this technique quite frequently to avoid having a whole bunch of empty slots in classes or structures. I trust that keyword handling in Common Lisp is implemented efficiently because it is such an integral part of the language. In a language that lacked such integral features, I would be much less likely to believe that some incidental library was sufficiently well implemented that I could use it.
/// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG | Except that nobody here has been saying that Common Lisp sucks.
Your observational skills are so deficient that whatever you say about what people have or have not done is completely irrelevant by now. Besides, you are among the clueless naysayers who deride Common Lisp for flaws it does not have and who do not know how to do things properly, so you think features you do know about make the language hard to use.
You also sprinkle your articles liberally with negative terminoloyg, like you just did about plists and alists. "Unfortunately", my ass.
/// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
> > I sense a contradiction here. There _is_ no "internationally polite" > > behavior, by what you said, so how can one use it?
> Politeness is not one-bit. Need I say more?
Yes, that the percieved politeness "value" is a distance from some arbitrary point (that is different for each person) to that vector that defines the "underlying" politeness.
-- -> -/ - Rahul Jain - \- <- -> -\ http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul -=- mailto:rj...@techie.com /- <- -> -/ "Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook \- <- -> -\ people if [they] try to walk around on their own. I really /- <- -> -/ wonder why XML does not." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp \- <- |--|--------|--------------|----|-------------|------|---------|-----|-| (c)1996-2002, All rights reserved. Disclaimer available upon request.
On Sun, 17 Mar 2002, Christopher Browne wrote: > In an
failed
> attempt to throw the authorities off his trail,
Alas, they got me and I'm currently typing this from an undisclosed location. Cold, drippy, and isolated, but *at least* there's a news feed -- they aren't barbarians, y'know!
(Well, reserve judgement until you see the groups they let me subscribe to :))
> >> and the arguments between Scheme and CL people are similar to the > >> arguments between Roman Catholics and Protestants - they're both > >> just more vampire-cultist christians to the outside observer, > >> though a member of either group will argue at length about > >> con/trans-substantiation, the status of the virgin mary, etc....
> > This is *really* offensive.
> > Interesting that you conflate all Protestants.
> Protestants _do_ tend to have a fair bit of common ground,
Sure, as do all Christians, etc. etc. etc.
And from some perspectives, it makes sense to make that conflation.
But perhaps I read too much into the "the" bit of "the outside observer", or perhaps its intended that anyone who *does* bother to figure out some of the distinctions is no longer sufficiently "outside". *Why* someone thus far outside feels a need to comment in the midst of such a discussion is a different issue. Likely, it's to be obnoxious in one way or another (afaict).
> in having > stemmed from common religious roots, in much the same way that pretty > much all Scheme implementors and users would be reasonably expected to > have common respect for R*RS, having Rather A Lot of Parentheses in > their language, liking the notion of having first class functions > around, and such.
It may be nigh incomprehensible to the outside observer, but I *suspect* there is more variation among Protestants than among Schemes. Shocking, I know, but, hey, Protestitism has had *hundreds* of years! Give scheme time!
> > Really interesting that the outsiders have *all* the defining > > power. Sorry, that's not how it usually goes. Oh, and yes, my > > ancesters are *Iranian*, not *Persian*. Thanks ;)
> I'm quite sure that the distinction isn't of too much import to me,
Does it have to be?
> not only from a strict utilitarian perspective, but also since both > those names of peoples are _English_, and thus are highly likely to be > of much more recent provenance than whatever were the names that > Iranian or Persian ancestors actually used.
You mean like my grandparents?
[snip]
> Getting too excited about the English words strikes me
Er..you got that it was a joke?
It is fairly complicated as one might expect that *English* speakers get to define what terms they use to refer to peoples *in English*. And so it is. But *I'm* an English speaker :)
> as being as > silly as getting deeply into bizarre interpretations of the Bible > based on the niceties of English words, when reality is that the Bible > was certainly _not_ written in the English language.
But the more interesting example was the student who called me a Parsee, which I am *not*, in any way. It might have helped to focus on the serious example and not on the joke.
[snip]
> > I guess the notions of respect and tolerance and understanding are > > just completely foreign.
> They're pretty "foreign" notions; with the number of "wars of > intolerance" that have circled the globe, over the millenia, it is not > at all clear to me that there is anywhere that they could be > considered to be "domestic" notions...
Well, I meant "for the original poster".
Just to avoid confusion, I'm a native born US citizen whose mother (and only) tongue is American English.
While I agree that tolerance is relatively rare, I tend to think that *expousing* it, or taking it as *right* isn't proper.
I take it the original poster thinks I misread what he wrote. We'll see.
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes: > Sometimes, when I hear Scheme people talk, and you among them, I > get the impression that there are 26 people trying to argue which > is the Only Right Letter and they are _so_ in the need of someone > to say "Hey, dudes! One word: _alphabet_".
Well, sure, that narrows the search space some, but really, do you think they'll be able to figure out which of the 7 remaining letters is the One Right Letter?
-- /|_ .-----------------------. ,' .\ / | No to Imperialist war | ,--' _,' | Wage class war! | / / `-----------------------' ( -. | | ) | (`-. '--.) `. )----'
On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, David Golden wrote: > Bijan Parsia wrote:
> > Outsider ~= ignorance and not caring > > about that ignorance.
> Huh? My argument was not that the outsider was ignorant, but that to the > outsider the differences may be inconsequential...
Hmm. Ok, my impression was that the outsider *wasn't able to tell*.
If it causes nations to rise and fall and millions of people to die, then it seems consequential (in an important sense).
> i.e. Being fully aware > of the differences (not ignorant of them) and not caring about them...
Not caring about them to the point that you make (or *can* make?) no distinction between them? How is that being fully aware of the differences.
I may say, "Look, anything that has a monthesitic god is just *not* going to work for me. Thus, from this perspective, they are all the same. No trivial variation will change my actions wrt them." but that's vastly different than saying, "Look, Christianity and Judiasm are just the same religion, so when I said that I don't want to be a Christian I was *also* saying I didn't want to be a Jew."
There's some sort of error there.
> The rest of your argument rests on _your_ assumption of ignorance on > the part of the outsider.
Perhaps. I inferred ignorance from the rest of your description. Take this quote:
"""To even be able to argue reasonably coherently about the differences, one must understand both Scheme and CL at a very deep level at the very least - which I don't. [snip]
I'd say that only members of some sort of "Lisp" community would be able to do the argung in the first place.
[snip]
From the "outside", Scheme and CL are Lisps, and the arguments between Scheme and CL people are similar to the arguments between Roman Catholics and Protestants - they're both just more vampire-cultist christians to the outside observer, though a member of either group will argue at length about con/trans-substantiation, the status of the virgin mary, etc....
So, probably only a devoted member of the community is going to be able to understand the issues involved,"""
I'm back at reading this as assuming the the outside observer doesn't understand, perhaps *can't* understand, perhaps because of ennui. I agree that many are like that, I just disagree with the bits where such folks are somehow relevant to settling most issues, especially *inside* the relevant communities (which *is* after all, where you posted).
> I don't think I painted the outsider as a *stupid* jerk.
Sorry, I read over your post again and I *still* come away with that perception.
> Jerk, maybe. It's > possible to be fully aware of the intricacies of christianity, or lisp,
This didn't seem to be what you said in the original post. Pointers with close readings welcome (off list preferred, though).
> and > _still_ recognise that roman catholic., the orthodox churches and the > various flavours of protestant churches are all subsets of "christianity", > or that christianity, islam and judaism are all subsets of "monotheistic > religion",
And who denied this? Such descriptions are available to the "in group" members too. What has this to do with definitional powers (including the alledged superior labeling rights of the outsider)?
Interestingly, it's *true* that those Churchs are all christian and *true* that chrisitanity, islam, and judiams are all montheistic religions and that *almost no one*, inside *or* outside the group dispute it.
> just as one could recognise that scheme or common lisp are > subsets of some "lisp" ideal
Well, which lisp ideal is under dispute.
>, and that the "lisp" ideal is a subset of > "programming language concepts".
That isn't under dispute.
Why would these things be *more* available to the outsider than the "insider"?
I take the statement: "To be a member of a Christian sect/religion is to believe in the Trinity the way the Catholics do" to be straightforwardly false, and most everyone agrees. That is distinct from a Catholic arguing "The correct understanding of Christ and God includes believing in the Trinity the way Catholics do." And outside may simply not care, which is fine, but the *outsider* gets to determine that it's true? *Just* in virtue of being an outsider? I hope not.
(I stay on the religious example just to keep the issues separate from the current debate in the list, not because I think religious communities have special status.)
If the point of your post was, "C and Java folks think that Scheme is a Lisp", that's hardly useful to *determining* whether Scheme is a Lisp. (Acutally, I take it that your post argued *something* like, *since* Lisp outsiders think that Scheme is a Lisp, then Scheme is a Lisp. I'm arguing that such an argument is a non sequitur.)
I take what you said in this post to be reasonable unobjectionable (well, except for the parts where you interpret *me* :)), so if that's what you meant to say, then we can stop.
> > > Outsider ~= ignorance and not caring > > > about that ignorance.
> > Huh? My argument was not that the outsider was ignorant, but that to the > > outsider the differences may be inconsequential...
> Hmm. Ok, my impression was that the outsider *wasn't able to tell*.
> If it causes nations to rise and fall and millions of people to die, then > it seems consequential (in an important sense).
> > i.e. Being fully aware > > of the differences (not ignorant of them) and not caring about them...
> Not caring about them to the point that you make (or *can* make?) no > distinction between them? How is that being fully aware of the > differences.
> I may say, "Look, anything that has a monthesitic god is just *not* going > to work for me. Thus, from this perspective, they are all the same. No > trivial variation will change my actions wrt them." but that's vastly > different than saying, "Look, Christianity and Judiasm are just the same > religion, so when I said that I don't want to be a Christian I was *also* > saying I didn't want to be a Jew."
> There's some sort of error there.
> > The rest of your argument rests on _your_ assumption of ignorance on > > the part of the outsider.
> Perhaps. I inferred ignorance from the rest of your
> """To even be able to argue reasonably coherently about the differences, > one must understand both Scheme and CL at a very deep level at the very > least - which I don't. > [snip]
> I'd say that only members of some sort of "Lisp" community would > be able to do the argung in the first place.
> [snip]
> From the "outside", Scheme and CL are Lisps, and the arguments between > Scheme and CL people are similar to the arguments between Roman Catholics > and Protestants - they're both just more vampire-cultist christians to the > outside observer, though a member of either group will argue at length > about con/trans-substantiation, the status of the virgin mary, etc....
> So, probably only a devoted member of the community is going to be able to > understand the issues involved,"""
> I'm back at reading this as assuming the the outside observer doesn't > understand, perhaps *can't* understand, perhaps because of ennui. I agree > that many are like that, I just disagree with the bits where such folks > are somehow relevant to settling most issues, especially *inside* the > relevant communities (which *is* after all, where you posted).
> > I don't think I painted the outsider as a *stupid* jerk.
> Sorry, I read over your post again and I *still* come away with that > perception.
> > Jerk, maybe. It's > > possible to be fully aware of the intricacies of
> This didn't seem to be what you said in the original post. Pointers with > close readings welcome (off list preferred, though).
> > and > > _still_ recognise that roman catholic., the orthodox churches and the > > various flavours of protestant churches are all subsets of "christianity", > > or that christianity, islam and judaism are all subsets of "monotheistic > > religion",
> And who denied this? Such descriptions are available to the "in > group" members too. What has this to do with definitional powers > (including the alledged superior labeling rights of the outsider)?
> Interestingly, it's *true* that those Churchs are all christian and *true* > that chrisitanity, islam, and judiams are all montheistic religions and > that *almost no one*, inside *or* outside the group dispute it.
> > just as one could recognise that scheme or common lisp are > > subsets of some "lisp" ideal
> Well, which lisp ideal is under dispute.
> >, and that the "lisp" ideal is a subset of > > "programming language concepts".
> That isn't under dispute.
> Why would these things be *more* available to the outsider than the > "insider"?
> I take the statement: "To be a member of a Christian sect/religion is to > believe in the Trinity the way the Catholics do" to be straightforwardly > false, and most everyone agrees. That is distinct from a Catholic arguing > "The correct understanding of Christ and God includes believing in the > Trinity the way Catholics do." And outside may simply not care, which is > fine, but the *outsider* gets to determine that it's true? *Just* in > virtue of being an outsider? I hope not.
> (I stay on the religious example just to keep the issues separate from the > current debate in the list, not because I think religious communities have > special status.)
> If the point of your post was, "C and Java folks think that Scheme is a > Lisp", that's hardly useful to *determining* whether Scheme is a > Lisp. (Acutally, I take it that your post argued *something* like, *since* > Lisp outsiders think that Scheme is a Lisp, then Scheme is a Lisp. I'm > arguing that such an argument is a non sequitur.)
> I take what you said in this post to be reasonable
> > > > and the arguments between > > > > Scheme and CL people are similar to the arguments between Roman Catholics > > > > and Protestants - they're both just more vampire-cultist christians to the > > > > outside observer, though a member of either group will argue at length > > > > about con/trans-substantiation, the status of the virgin mary, etc....
> > > This is *really* offensive.
> To me.
> > That lies in the eye of the beholder. :) I do _not_ feel > > offended. Even though I live in a mainly protestant area, but nobody > > does care here either.
> Actually, it's not the Prot/catholic/christian bash that offended me > :) Well, much.
Rahul Jain <rj...@sid-1129.sid.rice.edu> writes: > Yes, that the percieved politeness "value" is a distance from some > arbitrary point (that is different for each person) to that vector > that defines the "underlying" politeness.
I never claimed that politeness is completely relativistic. -- (espen)
Espen Vestre <espen@*do-not-spam-me*.vestre.net> writes: > I never claimed that politeness is completely relativistic.
Then you missed an important fact, and it's not worth discussing politeness with someone who does.
-- -> -/ - Rahul Jain - \- <- -> -\ http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul -=- mailto:rj...@techie.com /- <- -> -/ "Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook \- <- -> -\ people if [they] try to walk around on their own. I really /- <- -> -/ wonder why XML does not." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp \- <- |--|--------|--------------|----|-------------|------|---------|-----|-| (c)1996-2002, All rights reserved. Disclaimer available upon request.
Rahul Jain <rj...@sid-1129.sid.rice.edu> writes: > Then you missed an important fact, and it's not worth discussing > politeness with someone who does.
And what, if I may ask, would be the point of continuing a discussion of politeness with someone who has a nihilist (or, in CLL terms, one-bit) view of it?
But you're probably only testing my temper... -- (espen)
>You know you're reading comp.lang.lisp when > the religious debates are calmer than the other posts.
>Anyone for politics?
Religious discussions are just OK here. Lisp is The Latin Language of Software Engineering. Everybody is respecting it but nobody is using it. By the way, even Vatican is not using Latin anymore...
A.L.
P.S. By the way, I am not a troll. I have a lot of fun reading discussions on c.l.l.
Duane Rettig wrote: > > Lookups in alists can be slightly faster on current hardware, > > I think.
> What's your theory?
Load latency could be a bigger problem running down the plist; you have a chain of 2N cons cells to follow. In the alist, you need only follow a chain of N cons cells (you also need to load the cars of these cells, but that's off the critical path.)
"Joe Marshall" <prunesqual...@attbi.com> writes: > You know you're reading comp.lang.lisp when > the religious debates are calmer than the other posts.
> Anyone for politics?
Kent tried, but nobody bit. To get a good flame war he'll have to make the relationship between the political and technical content more tenuous. As it is people get all distracted by the technical stuff.
Bruce Lewis <brls...@yahoo.com> writes: > "Joe Marshall" <prunesqual...@attbi.com> writes:
> > You know you're reading comp.lang.lisp when > > the religious debates are calmer than the other posts.
> > Anyone for politics?
> Kent tried, but nobody bit. To get a good flame war he'll have to make > the relationship between the political and technical content more > tenuous. As it is people get all distracted by the technical stuff.
I just wanted to start discussing the American two-party-system, but Kent made it clear that he did not want such a discussion. So... Joschka Fischer for Bundeskanzler! No, just kidding. ;)
Let's try to avoid Politics. Programming is strange enough.
> Oops. I was wrong. Plists and alists do cons the same. I never think > about it. I guess I would back off of my original statement and say > that plists are represented with fewer parens, which could count as > an aesthetic pro.
If you have an implementation that can do cdr-coded lists, a plist turns into the moral equivalent of a vector, and ends up taking a lot less space and being faster to access than the equivalent alist.
Cdr-coding was an obvious win in the days of Lisp machines; I don't know how it might play out with modern processors.
>> > You know you're reading comp.lang.lisp when >> > the religious debates are calmer than the other posts.
>> > Anyone for politics?
>> Kent tried, but nobody bit. To get a good flame war he'll have to >> make the relationship between the political and technical content >> more tenuous. As it is people get all distracted by the technical >> stuff.
> I just wanted to start discussing the American two-party-system, but > Kent made it clear that he did not want such a discussion. > So... Joschka Fischer for Bundeskanzler! No, just kidding. ;)
> Let's try to avoid Politics. Programming is strange enough.
Politics is too localized to be readily disputable in so clearly international a forum.
I'm afraid Bundestad politics would leave me baffled as I know nothing of the characters or of the issues. (I do remember Norm MacDonald repeatedly saying: "Or so the Germans would have us believe...")
I could personally opine somewhat usefully/entertainingly about both US and Canadian politics, knowing more than merely the stereotypes of both those lands.
To folks in Europe or Down Under, understanding of the US political landscape is more than likely dominated by the _stereotypes_ that get filtered through the media as opposed to the reality of the landscape.
And we haven't enough "intentionally ignorant redneck hick" types to get into the conspiracy theory slurring of things, typically involving people who have wild ideas about the UN, the Rothschilds, the Tripartite Commission, and who generally use the phrase "international bankers" as their codeword for "filthy Jews." Happily there aren't (m)any of those here.
All in all, I suspect we can realistically do little more than see the _stereotypes_ of each others' political landscapes. -- (reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.gultn@" "enworbbc")) http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/sap.html Rule of Scarcity "If it's not allocated by a market, then it's more expensive than money." -- Mark Miller
Nils Goesche wrote: > And I care even less about reading arguments trying to convince > me that I should rather use some ``eugenic'' macros or some such to > replace my beloved Common Lisp macros. Can't people at least use some > name that isn't clearly intended to be insulting when talking about > these things on comp.lang.lisp? How about calling them ``castrated'' > macros instead?
Kohlbecker actually developed hygienic macro technology with Common Lisp as the intended application language. The X3J13 committee that developed the ANSI standard for Common Lisp decided not to adopt this technology because it was too new and Kohlbecker's original algorithm was too inefficient. I think this was probably the right decision, although I personally was disappointed at the time.
To say that the name of this technology was "clearly intended to be insulting" is at odds with historical fact. When Kohlbecker chose this name for his technology, he had no way of knowing that the Common Lisp community would reject it, or that the Scheme and Dylan communities would adopt it.
Bruce Hoult wrote: > I don't know what happens in Scheme, but in Dylan if a macro uses the > canonical True value #t (or any other name, for that matter) then the > binding used is the one current at the point that the macro is > *defined*, not used.
That's what happens in Scheme also. Dylan's macro system is hygienic, like Scheme's.
* Paul Dietz | Load latency could be a bigger problem running down the plist; you have a | chain of 2N cons cells to follow. In the alist, you need only follow a | chain of N cons cells (you also need to load the cars of these cells, but | that's off the critical path.)
In traversing plists, you have to get the car to compare, and then two cdrs to move forward, but in alists, you have to get the car of the car to compare, and then one cdr to move forward. I am fuzzy on how this is so different. Could you explain?
/// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
