Well, I guess I will post yet another article about this topic. I hope I did not misinterpret anything, but if I have, please point that out to me.
From reading this newsgroup for some time now (four or five months) I have seen a lot of articles and ideas that treat Lisp like a religion. I know Lisp is a great programming language and I personally would be very happy to see it gain more popularity, but I do not think it is right to think it is the one true religion and the unbelievers should be converted.
In one of the recent post (by Lisa Fattner), I have seen the following sentence: "So, help spread the word about Lisp!" I don't know about you, perhaps it is completely normal and I'm just too young to understand it, but to me it really sounds like some slogan of christian merceneries. Why do people feel need to convert everyone else to something they found useful or feel is right? It seems very similar to the way religios fanatics think about their language, they do not comprehend the fact that it's just their point of view.
What I don't understand even more is why I have the same attitude sometimes and why I even study Lisp if it does not completely sattisfy me. Perhaps all this is just the way human mind works -- everybody must use whatever I find right to use!
Regards, Richard
P.S. Please correct me if I'm wrong somewhere (or everywhere).
-- Richard Krushelnitskiy "I know not with what weapons World War III will richar...@gmx.net be fought, but World War IV will be fought with http://rkrush.cjb.net sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein
> Well, I guess I will post yet another article about this topic. I hope > I did not misinterpret anything, but if I have, please point that out > to me.
> From reading this newsgroup for some time now (four or five months) I > have seen a lot of articles and ideas that treat Lisp like a religion. > I know Lisp is a great programming language and I personally would be > very happy to see it gain more popularity, but I do not think it is > right to think it is the one true religion and the unbelievers should > be converted.
Hm... I'm not sure if it is that critical.
> In one of the recent post (by Lisa Fattner), I have seen the following > sentence: "So, help spread the word about Lisp!" I don't know about you, > perhaps it is completely normal and I'm just too young to understand > it, but to me it really sounds like some slogan of christian merceneries. > Why do people feel need to convert everyone else to something they found > useful or feel is right? It seems very similar to the way religios > fanatics think about their language, they do not comprehend the fact > that it's just their point of view.
I understand "spread the word about Lisp" more as making Lisp as a versatile tool for many problems a little bit more known. A generally good reputation of Lisp would maybe make it easier to push it's use in more projects.
>>>>> "RK" == Richard Krush <richar...@gmx.net> writes:
[...] RK> In one of the recent post (by Lisa Fattner), I have seen the RK> following sentence: "So, help spread the word about Lisp!" I RK> don't know about you, perhaps it is completely normal [...]
It is completely normal I think. I suspect she's a marketing person. This is one of the things marketing people are supposed to do IMHO. I wouldn't read too much into that. Franz also coined the term "evangelisp" which at least got a chuckle out of me.
RK> What I don't understand even more is why I have the same RK> attitude sometimes and why I even study Lisp if it does not RK> completely sattisfy me. [...]
You conversion is incomplete but nonetheless on the right track. Recite a different click-path through the hyperspec every night, and your doubts will disappear.
In article <9nc1vu$6a2n...@ID-60069.news.dfncis.de>, Richard Krush wrote: >In one of the recent post (by Lisa Fattner), I have seen the following >sentence: "So, help spread the word about Lisp!" I don't know about you, >perhaps it is completely normal and I'm just too young to understand >it, but to me it really sounds like some slogan of christian merceneries.
The big difference is that Lisp exists, and has some concrete, demonstrable properties that can be translated into useful advantages. It's possible to speak or write honestly and rationally about these properties, and to make fair comparisons between Lisp and other programming languages.
Spreading the word is one of the ways in which technical and scientific knowledge is distributed. Distributing such knowledge is not the same as blind evangelism.
>Why do people feel need to convert everyone else to something they found >useful or feel is right?
``Convert'' means to drop something in favor of an alternative. Encouraging people to learn about Lisp is not the same as a demanding that they abandon every other programming language.
>What I don't understand even more is why I have the same attitude >sometimes and why I even study Lisp if it does not completely sattisfy >me.
No programming language can satisfy every conceivable need. So if you reject them on that criterion, you end up with nothing.
Jochen Schmidt <j...@dataheaven.de> wrote: > Richard Krush wrote: >> In one of the recent post (by Lisa Fattner), I have seen the following >> sentence: "So, help spread the word about Lisp!" I don't know about you, >> perhaps it is completely normal and I'm just too young to understand >> it, but to me it really sounds like some slogan of christian merceneries. >> Why do people feel need to convert everyone else to something they found >> useful or feel is right? It seems very similar to the way religios >> fanatics think about their language, they do not comprehend the fact >> that it's just their point of view. > I understand "spread the word about Lisp" more as making Lisp as a versatile > tool for many problems a little bit more known. A generally good reputation > of Lisp would maybe make it easier to push it's use in more projects.
Ok, I think I see where I missed the point. If I understand you correctly (plus some overhead of my own), then you're saying that if Lisp gets more popular among the companies, you/we as Lisp programmers will be able to use the language of our choice?
If that is so, than I think I was wrong on most of my points...
Regards, Richard
-- Richard Krushelnitskiy "I know not with what weapons World War III will richar...@gmx.net be fought, but World War IV will be fought with http://rkrush.cjb.net sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein
On 8 Sep 2001 03:06:38 GMT, Richard Krush <richar...@gmx.net> wrote:
> What I don't understand even more is why I have the same attitude > sometimes and why I even study Lisp if it does not completely sattisfy > me. Perhaps all this is just the way human mind works -- everybody must > use whatever I find right to use!
You are simply beginning to see the power of the language and maybe some potential in yourself when you use it.
Knowing that other minds work in different ways usually comes with age. :-)
Richard Krush <richar...@gmx.net> wrote in message <news:9nc1vu$6a2ng$1@ID-60069.news.dfncis.de>... > In one of the recent post (by Lisa Fattner), I have seen the following > sentence: "So, help spread the word about Lisp!" I don't know about you, > perhaps it is completely normal and I'm just too young to understand > it, but to me it really sounds like some slogan of christian merceneries.
I don't know about anyone else, but *I* try to do my bit to spread the word about my favourite dialect of Lisp (which doesn't happen to be Common Lisp though CL is fine too) not for some sort of religious reason but because I'm hoping that one day I can find actual paying jobs for which I can use my favourite programming language instead of merely:
- hacking on the compiler itself
- using it to win prizes in the ICFP programming contest [1]
- writing personal projects in it
- writing consulting projects in it where the client doesn't know C++ from x86 assembler
I don't know whether you'd consider that a valid reason, but it floats my boat :-)
Kaz Kylheku <k...@ashi.footprints.net> wrote: > In article <9nc1vu$6a2n...@ID-60069.news.dfncis.de>, Richard Krush wrote: >>In one of the recent post (by Lisa Fattner), I have seen the following >>sentence: "So, help spread the word about Lisp!" I don't know about you, >>perhaps it is completely normal and I'm just too young to understand >>it, but to me it really sounds like some slogan of christian merceneries. > The big difference is that Lisp exists, and has some concrete, > demonstrable properties that can be translated into useful > advantages.
[...]
Yes. Lisp seems to be not the one true religion, it seems to be the only true reality. ;-)
Ciao, Oliver -- You are looking for a good tool for typesetting your documentation?
> I don't know about you, perhaps it is completely normal and I'm just too > young to understand it, but to me it really sounds like some slogan of > christian merceneries.
I think you mean "missionaries", although historically, I think your version sounds a lot more accurate.
> Why do people feel need to convert everyone else to something they found > useful or feel is right?
It is part of the human condition. Stupid people can only deal with agreement in concrete terms. The more intelligent you are, the more abstract the agreement can be that you need to feel part of a group. E.g., "people should agree with me and use my conditionals" vs "people should come to agreement through formalized diplomatic channels in a large society and strive to find such compromises that the entire society will use the same conditionals".
> It seems very similar to the way religios fanatics think about their > language, they do not comprehend the fact that it's just their point of > view.
Lots of things are similar to religions and most of the evil committed by mankind has been committed in the name of some religion or religious belief, so religions have so many obvious bad sides that some people feel that it is much better to destroy someone's credibility by likening them to religious zealots, for instance, than accusing them of being nazists or racists, although the latter are slightly more honest and obvious cases of rampant idiocy on part of the accuser and therefore less evil. However, having something in common with religions is not sufficient to make them religions. There are important aspects of religions that in their absence should make such a comparison reflect very poorly on the intelligence and intellectual honesty of the accuser. Instead, many people tacitly accept such an accusation because who wants to fight such a massively stupid person _or_ tackle the many intricate issues in what makes a religion.
The opposite of "just their point of view" is obviously not "religion". For one thing, that is just your stupid point of view and you should be among the first to realize that as such it has absolutely no merit. But you, too, want people to agree with your sentiments and convert people to your view, right? How religious is that? In fact, most of the people who see religions where other people see political parties or merely a strongly-held belief with no irrational elements at all, are themselves rebidly religious people, believing very strongly that other people's attitudes are as irrationally and unintelligently held as their view that those "other people" are religious. Witness the tremendous difficulty you have getting a person who has decided (how?) that someone else is religious that they are not. Such people are completely unreachable by intelligent counter-arguments or counter-information, and hold on to their irrational view, often the stronger the more their victims object.
So instead of being an accusation, "you are religious", _really_ says, "I am a religious asshole". Americans in particular should really figure out what the fifth amendment is all about and why it is so important in matters of law to protect people who are so stupid they will gladly admit to any hideous crime as long as they think they are blaming someone else.
There is _obviously_ something between "my opinion" and "irrationally held view believed absolutely without evidence or substantation". The concept of an objective (or interpersonal, intersubjective, or what have you) position that other people can (1) see the validity of, and (2) perhaps agree to, _if_ they get (almost) the same information the person who holds it has used to arrive at his view, is outside the reach of the highly religious people -- their basic assumption is that everybody else also arrive at their stupid opinions by a method known best as "guessing and making things up". This is also how they arrive at their conclusion that those who disagree with them are religious fanatics. Lacking the intellectual rigor or simply _ability_ to think in terms of "what (kind of) information must a person have received and _not_ have received in order to arrive at such a conclusion", they view their _own_ conclusions as mystically derived out of nowhere, and consequently that must be how everybody else derive theirs. Hence, "you are a religious zealot" means "I have lost my ability to think or probably never had any to begin with".
Even thinking in terms of religiously held beliefs implicates the person who does so much more than anyone he might think of. Therefore, the only solution is to completely disregard the nutballs who think in such terms -- they have come out openly and argued very strongly that they are free of all the responsibilities that come with intelligence and intellectual honesty.
Instead, consider what positions and beliefs are also likely to be held if you hold a certain view, like I have argued above against those who invoke "religious". If you hold the belief that political compromise is bad for a community and for each person in it, that is contradicting the view that people are sufficiently different that the only way we can find grounds for cooperation is to subjugate our personal needs to a _higher_ goal or value. To some people, the very concept of a "higher value" than themselves and their immediate needs is completely alien and invokes the "religious" response in them, probably because of an irrational rejection because of lots of bad experiences and no willingness to accept good ones to counter them, but the concept of a "higher value" is precisely what makes it possible for people to form societies and formulate conditions necessary to build them. The amount of compromise and subjugation of individual will to collective good this involves is quite impressing, actually, and the freedom we seek within such a framework must therefore be protected vigorously and fought for diligently, which also means that we must also be careful in which freedoms we choose to fight for. For instance, is freedom to express yourself at the expense of readability for others in the community worth more than the freedom move without impediment and worries in a world of fully conforming implementations of community standards such that you do not have to think about a large number of issues? But I sort of digress.
Just as people who have never seen complex problems they think are not solvable be solved easily with tools they do not know, tend not even to understand how to appreciate such tools, people who have not been exposed to larger issues than their own needs tend to fail to appreciate them and only see the oppressive side of any compromise and therefore are likely to invoke "religion" because it is one of the most oppressive and least understood aspects of human existence, especially among those who have rejected the prevailing religions in their society without rejecting the religious way of "thinking" they have picked up along the way.
> What I don't understand even more is why I have the same attitude > sometimes and why I even study Lisp if it does not completely sattisfy > me. Perhaps all this is just the way human mind works -- everybody must > use whatever I find right to use!
As long as you appreciate that some people's desire to see everybody use the same thing as them embace such advanced concepts as whole standards and community-building efforts, not just their individual pet operators at the cost of whole standards and community-building efforts.
One of the reasons for "spreading the word" about Lisp is to educate. Most programmers think of it as that "language with all the parentheses" and are not aware how far it has come since the days of dedicated machines.
> One of the reasons for "spreading the word" about Lisp is to educate. > Most programmers think of it as that "language with all the parentheses" > and are not aware how far it has come since the days of dedicated > machines.
I think they think of what kind of benefit the programming languages they are used to would have from being expressed with lots of parentheses. To be honest, that would be incredibly hard to explain because what they already have works just fine for them. The value of the parentheses are seen only when you understand how you can read and process code as data, which _only_ compiler freaks do in other languages. The ability to do code transformations between source and compiler is something most other languages would most probably consider _bad_, because of the horrible experience most people have with trying to do such things in C's excuse for a macro facility, and those who have seen m4 or troff or any of the other disgusting macro facilities out there have reason to retch and puke violently. Not to mention the fact that these guys are taught from day one that they cannot be trusted to remember the types of their variables and now they are asked to relinquish their one safety net: type checking in the compiler. The value of Lisp is outside the reach of these guys.
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes: > * Steve Long <stevel...@isomedia.com> > > One of the reasons for "spreading the word" about Lisp is to educate. > > Most programmers think of it as that "language with all the parentheses" > > and are not aware how far it has come since the days of dedicated > > machines.
[...good stuff about value of parentheses, treating code as data, and the sad state of code transformation abilities in other languages...]
> Not to mention the fact that these guys are taught from day one that they > cannot be trusted to remember the types of their variables and now they are > asked to relinquish their one safety net: type checking in the compiler.
Well, they can't be trusted. Or, if they can, other users of their code cannot. Or, they do remember, but mistype things. The point is that mistakes happen, and extra safety nets provide useful value in the appropriate situations.
The issue of static type checking is orthogonal to the syntax style of Lisp. One can easily imagine a Lisp extended to have decent static checking (perhaps optionally) enabled for it (or at least a CL in which declare forms could be relied on to give decent warnings or errors on mistaches).
That static type checking is not as necessary in Lisp as compared to many compiled languages does not nullify its utility as another tool in the programmer's toolkit.
Taken to the extreme, the "real programmers don't make mistakes" idea would have us forgo language support for any error detection. I prefer to have the computer slave away detecting as many inconsistencies as possible. The trick of course, is to balance ease of use and flexibility with safety and correctness.
-- Cheers, The Rhythm is around me, The Rhythm has control. Ray Blaak The Rhythm is inside me, bl...@infomatch.com The Rhythm has my soul.
> Not to mention the fact that these guys are taught from day one that they > cannot be trusted to remember the types of their variables and now they > are asked to relinquish their one safety net: type checking in the > compiler.
* Ray Blaak
> Well, they can't be trusted. Or, if they can, other users of their code > cannot. Or, they do remember, but mistype things. The point is that > mistakes happen, and extra safety nets provide useful value in the > appropriate situations.
OK, I should have elaborated, but the point is that the appear to lose their safety nets because all they know about is static typing. They do not realize that when you have dynamic types, you cannot just use the binary values, you have to do runtime type checking, instead, but to make people with "binary" written on their foreheads understand this, you have to tell them about how you represent your type-tagged binary values and how inexpensive and painless your type checking really is on modern hardware.
My underlying point was that to get a C head to think Lisp, you have to give him a lot of nitty-gritty implementation details to re-establish his feelings of safety and trust which you took away from him several times.
> The issue of static type checking is orthogonal to the syntax style of > Lisp. One can easily imagine a Lisp extended to have decent static > checking (perhaps optionally) enabled for it (or at least a CL in which > declare forms could be relied on to give decent warnings or errors on > mistaches).
I would just _love_ to be able to write code that used the hardware for what it was worth in Common Lisp. In fact, I have been thinking about this and implementing various things for this over many years. A friend of mine took one of my embryonic sets of ideas at one time and tinkered with the gcc backend, but by the time he was finished with it, it had lost all its Lispiness, but at least it was quite possible to thinker with the gcc backend. If this could be done well, it would be possible to enter a new era of foreign-function interfacing and writing code in Common Lisp that would be usable by other programs. Due to our very different ABI, we live in a separate world, and using some other language to do some of the work for us is way expensive compared to most other languages that work well with each others, both in programmer time and at runtime.
> That static type checking is not as necessary in Lisp as compared to many > compiled languages does not nullify its utility as another tool in the > programmer's toolkit.
Precisely. And since static typing is most frequently exloited to allow compilation of code that uses hardware types efficiently, I think the lack of direct access to hardware types is one of the things that make the transition from other languages much harder. The types you are taught to think in tend to influence how you think, to paraphrase the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
> Taken to the extreme, the "real programmers don't make mistakes" idea > would have us forgo language support for any error detection.
I have never even implied that real programmers do not make mistakes. They just make _other_ mistakes.
> * Richard Krush <richar...@gmx.net> > > I don't know about you, perhaps it is completely normal and I'm just too > > young to understand it, but to me it really sounds like some slogan of > > christian merceneries.
> I think you mean "missionaries", although historically, I think your > version sounds a lot more accurate.
> > Why do people feel need to convert everyone else to something they found > > useful or feel is right?
> > It seems very similar to the way religios fanatics think about their > > language, they do not comprehend the fact that it's just their point of > > view.
> ...To some people, the very concept of a "higher value" than > themselves and their immediate needs is completely alien and invokes the > "religious" response in them, probably because of an irrational rejection > because of lots of bad experiences and no willingness to accept good ones > to counter them, but the concept of a "higher value" is precisely what > makes it possible for people to form societies and formulate conditions > necessary to build them.
I find these discussions similar to which is superior: Mac, Unix or Windows. It is difficult to weigh because there are objective superiorities interspersed with some kludgy stuff. So one needs to weigh the pros and cons and evaluate. Very often, the more experienced/educated evaluator is in a better position to render a judgment. You will get ego conflicts between people who each claim to have the best credentials. This happens in mathematics also when you have bright, well-educated experts who fail to share the same foundational views.
So each language has its adherents and zealots. Some languages like Python have proselytizers but they will lack a dimension. Religions start off as cults and if they survive long enough and gain enough converts they gain the status of a religion. They have a history. Cults usually have a charismatic leader.
So a young programming language like Python is not going to have the history to provide the conditions mentioned (seeping into the tradition) in the topic: "What I want from my Common Lisp vendor and the Common Lisp community" started my Erik Naggum which elicited 146+ responses. I notice the originator of this thread, Richard Krush, was the second poster in that thread and I think that his perception that there was an unusual intensity and response to this thread(an extra dimension) unlikely to be found in other comp.lang.* is correct.
Twelve step groups look to a higher power. However, a group like Alcoholics Anonymous is going to have a richer tradition and more experienced membersip than a younger group such as Sex Addicts Anon. It has been my experience that people do like to believe they have the best solution, or highest truth and often that they have an "in" which most other ordinary folk have failed to find. The satisfaction involved spreads across more fields than religion. I think that it reinforces the feeling of self-worth and a sense of discovered meaning. The problem of 'who judges the judge' (expert's expert) is related to what is the best form of government and how the best officials can be selected/elected or born to a higher destiny or even schemes on how to correctly apportion electoral votes or Representatives to use an example 'centric to the US but I think is covered under game theory. In summary, I think to label the content of such philosophical lisp posts as motivated by mere enthusiasm is to be euphemistic.
> I think they think of what kind of benefit the programming languages they > are used to would have from being expressed with lots of parentheses. To > be honest, that would be incredibly hard to explain because what they > already have works just fine for them. The value of the parentheses are > seen only when you understand how you can read and process code as data, > which _only_ compiler freaks do in other languages.
This doesn't really have anything to do with parentheses, though s-expressions probably make it easier to deal with code as data than, say, messing around with abstract syntax trees.
Personally, I think the ability to treat code as data is overrated. At least for the types of programming I tend to do. It's certainly not essential in order to see the huge benefits Lisp can give you.
> The ability to do > code transformations between source and compiler is something most other > languages would most probably consider _bad_, because of the horrible > experience most people have with trying to do such things in C's excuse > for a macro facility, and those who have seen m4 or troff or any of the > other disgusting macro facilities out there have reason to retch and puke > violently.
Some people have started referring to them as "syntax extensions", which may help prevent confusion by association with C-like "macros". Stressing the ability to do control-flow abstraction with them might also help.
> Not to mention the fact that these guys are taught from day > one that they cannot be trusted to remember the types of their variables > and now they are asked to relinquish their one safety net: type checking > in the compiler. The value of Lisp is outside the reach of these guys.
Oddly, they don't seem to have the least aversion to scattering casts throughout their code...
Ray Blaak wrote:
> The issue of static type checking is orthogonal to the syntax style of > Lisp. One can easily imagine a Lisp extended to have decent static checking > (perhaps optionally) enabled for it (or at least a CL in which declare forms > could be relied on to give decent warnings or errors on mistaches).
> I find these discussions similar to which is superior: Mac, Unix or Windows.
Really? You do not see the difference between discussing which of three _products_ is better and discussing principles that can be used to determine whether a given set of configurations of hardware and software meets user demands?
> I notice the originator of this thread, Richard Krush, was the second > poster in that thread and I think that his perception that there was an > unusual intensity and response to this thread(an extra dimension) > unlikely to be found in other comp.lang.* is correct.
Sigh. Religion has passion. Passion alone does not a religion make.
Shallow people always find something to bring home. Deep people often come up empty-handed.
> This doesn't really have anything to do with parentheses, though > s-expressions probably make it easier to deal with code as data than, > say, messing around with abstract syntax trees.
S-expressions are abstract syntax trees, for all practical purposes.
> Personally, I think the ability to treat code as data is overrated. At > least for the types of programming I tend to do. It's certainly not > essential in order to see the huge benefits Lisp can give you.
I think the middle sentence is true.
> Some people have started referring to them as "syntax extensions", which > may help prevent confusion by association with C-like "macros". > Stressing the ability to do control-flow abstraction with them might also > help.
That would be a good thing for Scheme. Common Lisp is not Scheme.
> Oddly, they don't seem to have the least aversion to scattering casts > throughout their code...
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes: > * Carl Gay <carl...@mediaone.net>
> > Oddly, they don't seem to have the least aversion to scattering casts > > throughout their code...
I find it quite funny, actually. Or horrifying, depending on whether I'm expected to fix their code or not.
> Huh? And what is non-static about casts? Nothing. You wrote:
Not to mention the fact that these guys are taught from day one that they cannot be trusted to remember the types of their variables and ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ now they are asked to relinquish their one safety net: type checking in the compiler.
And yet they feel perfectly comfortable breaking their previous promises to the compiler, comfortable in the knowledge that they remember the actual memory layout of the object pointed to, whatever the compiler might think.
There are plenty of casts in my C code, but for those people who really *can't* be trusted to remember the types of their variables, they are sometimes a source of remarkably difficult to find and fix bugs.
* t...@famine.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick)
> And yet they feel perfectly comfortable breaking their previous > promises to the compiler, comfortable in the knowledge that they > remember the actual memory layout of the object pointed to, whatever > the compiler might think.
But that is so different! A cast says "now I want this to be of type X", not "tell me if this is not used consistently with its declared type", which all the type checking is about. Ironically, a cast is like a type declaration in Common Lisp, which says "you may assume this is of type X".
> There are plenty of casts in my C code, but for those people who really > *can't* be trusted to remember the types of their variables, they are > sometimes a source of remarkably difficult to find and fix bugs.
I believe the same is true for highly optimized, e.g., (safety 0), Common Lisp code with declarations that are lies.
> * "Stephen Harris" <stephen.p.har...@worldnet.att.net> > > I find these discussions similar to which is superior: Mac, Unix or Windows.
> Really? You do not see the difference between discussing which of three > _products_ is better and discussing principles that can be used to > determine whether a given set of configurations of hardware and software > meets user demands?
No, not much do you? There is a fairly long learning curve for a Windows user to switch to Linux. The user may not care about control of the operating environment. For some people the difference in price would not produce a cost effective reason. So Word2000 fulfills a need perfectly for some users. It integrates well with Excel and Access. IOW Windows still lead in having software available for specific tasks and is ported sooner with priority. Other issues like stability for one month versus three years may hardly matter.
Likewise Perl is superior to Lisp for some simple jobs. In both cases it is the use that the product will be put to which determines the "best" x. This is how they are similar. You can of course select criteria for a comparison which will emphasize differences which do matter. A criteria could be which language is best for a beginner to learn first. Probably Python is better suited for this.
Technically, Internet Explorer is a superior browser than Netscape. But there are several ways to legitimately dispute that it is a "better" browser. And I happen to think SmallTalk has a special clarity of concept implementation.
> You do not see the difference between discussing which of three > _products_ is better and discussing principles that can be used to > determine whether a given set of configurations of hardware and software > meets user demands?
* Stephen Harris
> No, not much do you?
Was that "No, not much. Do you?" If so, yes, I most certainly do. The difference is that between arguing over which political party to vote for in an election and arguing over what democracy needs in order to work and give people the opportunity to hold elections. I assume you do not see any difference between these, either.
> It depends on how narrow your focus is,
It certainly does. If you cannot broaden your focus any more, you will not see any bigger pictures than you already have seen. This is the tragedy of dealing with people of very limited view.
> It certainly does. If you cannot broaden your focus any more, you will > not see any bigger pictures than you already have seen. This is the > tragedy of dealing with people of very limited view.
> ///
Yes, I guess this is what drives me to contribute a stream of didactic dictums.
You're so combative. I think you may have "issues".
Erik Naggum wrote:
> [ Please break your lines. ]
No, sorry, but I intentionally don't break my lines. You're newsreader ought to be able to wrap lines to the appropriate width. If I break my lines then losing newsreaders like Outlook Express will break them again in inappropriate places. (Of course my tactic only delays the inevitable by one reply iteration.)
> * Carl Gay <carl...@mediaone.net> > > This doesn't really have anything to do with parentheses, though > > s-expressions probably make it easier to deal with code as data than, > > say, messing around with abstract syntax trees.
> S-expressions are abstract syntax trees, for all practical purposes.
Sorry to be imprecise. I think s-expressions are an easier way to deal with code as data than most AST APIs probably are. I could be wrong.
> > Personally, I think the ability to treat code as data is overrated. At > > least for the types of programming I tend to do. It's certainly not > > essential in order to see the huge benefits Lisp can give you.
> I think the middle sentence is true.
The first sentence is a fact that only I can confirm. The third is the only one about which there can be any useful debate. I don't particularly like your way of claiming the third is false. Are you going to say why you think it's false?
> > Some people have started referring to them as "syntax extensions", which > > may help prevent confusion by association with C-like "macros". > > Stressing the ability to do control-flow abstraction with them might also > > help.
> That would be a good thing for Scheme. Common Lisp is not Scheme.
I don't understand. Why does this have anything to do with Scheme? Why did you get the impression that I think Common Lisp is Scheme?
* Carl Gay wrote: > No, sorry, but I intentionally don't break my lines. You're newsreader ought to be able to wrap lines to the appropriate width. If I break my lines then losing newsreaders like Outlook Express will break them again in inappropriate places. (Of course my tactic only delays the inevitable by one reply iteration.)
Oh wow. With an elementary grammatical error too. You really don't need any help to feed yourself to the sharks, do you?
In article <3B9CE2BD.B76EE...@mediaone.net>, Carl Gay wrote: >You're so combative. I think you may have "issues".
>Erik Naggum wrote:
>> [ Please break your lines. ]
>No, sorry, but I intentionally don't break my lines. You're newsreader
An admission of guilt! You are deliberately disregarding a rule of netiquette that intellingent people have respected and followed for years.
>ought to be able to wrap lines to the appropriate width. If I break
My newsreader simply cuts off the line, so I have to scroll horizontally to read it. But in your case, it's not worth the bother, so *plonk*.
>my lines then losing newsreaders like Outlook Express will break them >again in inappropriate places. (Of course my tactic only delays the >inevitable by one reply iteration.)
Right, in other words, you are pushing editing work onto other people. I had to do a few edits to break your line, and then insert the quote marks. I could automate the process, but I find that it's more efficient to just *plonk* idiots who can't follow the simple rules.
