Espen Vestre wrote: > Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.no> writes:
>>* Rolf Wester >>| I'm German and I'm highly sensitive concerning this kind of words.
>> Not my problem.
> Please note that "Untermensch" is a more dangerous expression than > "Übermensch" (Nietsche never used the former, btw!). You didn't want > Godwin's Law to be applied, did you?
[Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful. "
> Well, you see, since we're all such a bunch of savages, and we > obviously don't know anything about Lisp really as you've made so > clear, and we're trolling you and unprofessional beasts and all, > wouldn't it be really a much better use of your time to just not post > to cll any more?
primary:
'you' are not cll.
additionally:
there are 'highlights'.
finally:
i've hope.
> It must be really a huge waste of your time having > to deal with us unprofessional beasts who understand nothing and > refuse to learn from you,
no it isn't.
> and I certainly don't think there is > anything that we can teach *you*.
every human can teach me.
after i teach him.
how to teach me.
> You are *clearly* so far beyond the > rest of the Lisp community that you would be far better starting your > own community of disciples -
no need.
The Spirit of Lisp.
> we are just a bunch of stuck-in-the-mud > retards who, in 20 years, have failed to see the many glaring faults > in our standards and implementations.
Erik Naggum wrote: > * Tim Bradshaw > | it's quite hard to feel sympathy for our current troll.
> I find this an odd statement. I am overwhelmed with sympathy for him, which > is why I want nothing to do with him at all. It is precisely because this is > such a sympathy-inducing creature that he has no place in a public forum. > This is a person about whom I have two unwelcome choices: To care about him > personally or not care about him or anything he says at all. Nothing he says > invites me to respond professionally to his questions. He asks me to take > part in his personal life, which is a disgraceful request in public. It is > like using the public announcement system of a full football stadium to ask > someone for a date. It is not only embarrassing in itself, it puts you in a > position where you understand that answering in the negative will be a > terrible blow, and you therefore understand that doing it in public may be > nothing short of a manipulative move to make you answer in the affirmative > because you at least feel enough about the stupid requestor to save him from > a crushing defeat. In short, I find the overwhelming sympathy obscene. It > is for the very same reason that I find street prostitutes distasteful -- it > is not that they sell their body in a degrading manner, it is that anyone who > understands what they are doing is forced to either care personally or to > block any and all sympathy from reaching them, causing either an overwhelming > personal involvement in the personal tragedy of strangers or a dehumanizing > lack of emotional response to their plight. Both are deeply offensive to me.
ilias <at_n...@pontos.net> wrote: > > we are just a bunch of stuck-in-the-mud > > retards who, in 20 years, have failed to see the many glaring faults > > in our standards and implementations.
> hard words. > repeat them.
Wow, he's starting to get more insightful. (I'm not just talking about the part I quoted.) Erik Naggum is not about to pester ilias for advice anytime soon, but that's just a matter of time.
Robert Hanlin wrote: > ilias <at_n...@pontos.net> wrote:
>>>we are just a bunch of stuck-in-the-mud >>>retards who, in 20 years, have failed to see the many glaring faults >>>in our standards and implementations.
>>hard words. >>repeat them.
> Wow, he's starting to get more insightful. (I'm not just talking > about the part I quoted.) Erik Naggum is not about to pester ilias > for advice anytime soon, but that's just a matter of time.
yes, i think he'll be able in about... 20 years to overcome his ego.
Vassil Nikolov wrote: > Jacek Podkanski <jacekpodkan...@supanet.com> writes: > [...] >> Thank you for the >> link. I will have a look at your HyperSpec.
> You are welcome; of course, it is not mine.
> Kent Pitman did a *Very Good Thing* by making it.
> ---Vassil.
Ooops, I meant recommended by you. -- Jacek Podkanski
* Robert Hanlin | Erik Naggum is not about to pester ilias for advice anytime soon, but that's | just a matter of time.
Geez. Do you think you could any /more/ focused on people?
One toxic effect of catering to people like "ilias" is that people who have nothing whatsoever to offer anyone feel they have something to offer.
-- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Today, the sum total of the money I would retain from the offers in the more than 7500 Nigerian 419 scam letters received in the past 33 months would have exceeded USD 100,000,000,000. You can stop sending me more offers, now.
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.no> wrote: > Geez. Do you think you could any /more/ focused on people?
I must. Names are the label associated with everyone's posts, and I filter accordingly.
> One toxic effect of catering to people like "ilias" is that people who have > nothing whatsoever to offer anyone feel they have something to offer.
Presumably you are speaking about me. But I've written two useless posts to c.l.lisp that I remember, and both times were a result of your harsh words to someone. Clearly you are not helping clear the newsgroup of noise, perhaps you are even forcing ilias to compensate for your stupidity by being even more determined, so why not change strategy?
Anyway, I seem to recall that you were one huge problem with this newsgroup as a representative of the community. While you may have interesting lisp experience, it is unfortuately inseparable from your bile, as if there was one little piece of crap in the main course that always drew attention. So perhaps you should apologize to me for being "focused on people."
OK, I understand this to mean that you do not have the mental wherewithall to understand that focusing on people is a choice, opposed to focusing on the arguments, on information, on ideas, on knowledge, on understanding, etc. Prmitive minds focus on people, react to people, and blame people. Advanced minds relate to ideas. Those who focus on people are actually broken people themselves and therefore look at other people to discover that they are not alone in being broken. Functional people have an actual /purpose/ to their communication and do not find casting blame and spreading their hatred far and wide conducive to their purposes. Dysfunctional people focus on feeling well, because they do not feel well, and think this is somebody else's fault. If you do not feel well, you should stay home and repair yourself, not impose your personal problems on other people. This is a really simple guideline.
| Presumably you are speaking about me.
Yes, you have proven yourself to be toxic to us. However, you are, by your own admission, unable to act more intelligently than you do, so you are sort of excused for your inability to do better. By your own admission, your own "contributions" here must be judged according to their sender, not according to their contents. Since you do not understand anything beyond a primitive level of interaction with other people, you will not understand that you have any alternatives and will never improve or behave differently towards people you think are at fault for your lack of feelings you can cope with.
| So perhaps you should apologize to me for being "focused on people."
Far from it. Focusing on people is a disease. You spread that disease with your actions and your toxic articles, which, by your own admission, do not carry intelligent communication relevant to this forum. This are, however, simply actions and choices on your part, and you can make other choices if you realize that you have a choice. As long as you think you "must" focus on people, you must be judged accordingly, as a diseased, broken person.
Your own actions have brought focus on yourself and your response to cast blame on me is simply stupid and does you no credit at all. You have nothing to offer this forum except your own personal relations with people here, which you abuse the public forum to flaunt, and as such are a useless piece of shit. So go stink up some other forum, please. If you have no bowel control of your own, seek help. This is not the proper forum to get help.
Now, please leave this forum to people who can focus on its purpose, which is, probably to your amazement, not your personal animosity towards me, but the programming language Common Lisp and/or the language family Lisp. Do you understand this or will you continue to attack me and not get the message? You will get preicsely one -1- opportunity to behave better than you have before you are judged an incorriigible idiot and menace to society. Make your choice wisely.
-- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Today, the sum total of the money I would retain from the offers in the more than 7500 Nigerian 419 scam letters received in the past 33 months would have exceeded USD 100,000,000,000. You can stop sending me more offers, now.
> Now, please leave this forum to people who can focus on its purpose, which > is, probably to your amazement, not your personal animosity towards me, but > the programming language Common Lisp and/or the language family Lisp. Do you > understand this or will you continue to attack me and not get the message? > You will get preicsely one -1- opportunity to behave better than you have > before you are judged an incorriigible idiot and menace to society. Make > your choice wisely.
Oh, you would not like an attack? You prefer to call ilias an idiot, use the word "you" all the time when trying to defeat cancers in your newsgroup yet chide me for focussing on people?
All right. I merely charge that "you," in the abstract (who must be a nice individual in the particular), disrupt the normal cycle of learning in newsgroups like this. In other newsgroups, people learn by making tentative posts without quite understanding the culture, they are corrected in the main, and eventually become members who enforce those norms. You ruin this process by playing the role of the newsgroup-supported toxic granny, whom no one wants to be dominated by. http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame5.html
What do you consider an important, enlightening post to c.l.lisp? I notice that most of the time it's some variation of "Why don't people like Lisp?" It comes in the guise of posts like "Why don't those Python guys just use Lisp," or "Why is it so hard to get a normal job doing lisp?" Maybe you don't like them, but since I've seen few complaints, presumably that's considered a Useful topic here. So I'm being precisely topical, because I think there is something about Lisp which supports bureaucrats like a Naggum, someone who sits in his comfortable space after having learned lisp and spends his day flaming.
So more than attacking you, because you're unwilling to be attacked, is that there's a problem with Lisp being sufficiently dull due to its stability, and so there's not enough desire to build apps on top of lisp because it's simply not enjoyable.
I presume that Graham will be successful with Arc, not so much because of his interesting insights, but because it's a new language that people can learn actively rather than passively.
Now to make this whole discussion concrete, let me point out one discussion where you took part. Someone was trying to get a simple Unix operation to work in Lisp, which struck him as a bit silly as he didn't realize that the Lisp solution was more general if a bit verbose. You responded that Lisp's handling of filesystems are general, but wrapped it in paragraphs of bile. And he gave you an insight that you cheerfully ignored! People think that computing history started with Unix, which lifted everything out of the muck! And so when people are faced with the prospect of learning loads of generality when they just want to practice lisp by reading and parsing a file, they can either be flamed or go to Python.
The Lisp cheerleaders TOLD them that Lisp was more powerful. They did not tell them however, of the interesting generality. So it becomes painful, not interesting, and they consider it an "academic" language that doesn't work for the Real World. No one pointed out that, "Oh, here's a macro that makes the learning curve flatter, just load this in..." or "You may think that Unix is the phat, 'home boy,' but there is so much history behind everything, take a look at this faq which describes a different world than your 'crib.'"
> You will get preicsely one -1- opportunity to behave better than you have > before you are judged an incorriigible idiot and menace to society.
Since your one -1- mechanism to do any more than this is a killfile, I suggest you compromise with me and give me a couple more chances to make mistakes before I learn to sit well in your culture and produce insightful posts. After all, this is a social forum, and while it's about ideas, you really shouldn't ignore its underlying nature of people.
But do as you wish, I get the sad feeling that you've run an Eliza bot against me, customizing some parts by hand before sending it to the newsgroup... and I appreciate the fact I'm playing the straight man.
Robert Hanlin wrote: > Oh, you would not like an attack? You prefer to call ilias an idiot, > use the word "you" all the time when trying to defeat cancers in your > newsgroup yet chide me for focussing on people?
There are two kinds of folks on the Usenet. Those who engage in protracted hand-to-hand combat with other posters, and those who do not.
Thank you for making the best choice you could possibly make given your intellectual capacity. Your choice has been duly noted and will of course be respected. If people want to read long stories about me by a disturbed individual, they will know where to find them. If they want to read articles on Common Lisp, they will know where not to find them. Thank you for playing.
-- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Today, the sum total of the money I would retain from the offers in the more than 7500 Nigerian 419 scam letters received in the past 33 months would have exceeded USD 100,000,000,000. You can stop sending me more offers, now.
Kenny Tilton <ktil...@nyc.rr.com> wrote: > There are two kinds of folks on the Usenet. Those who engage in > protracted hand-to-hand combat with other posters, and those who do not.
Don't worry, this is the first time I've started replying to his posts, and it's clarified my thinking on what's missing from the lisp community. I'm sorry if it's been stressful for anyone else, but at least it was enlightening for me.
I would personally like to see c.l.lisp invaded, to be a place where there can be interesting discussion for people who are new to lisp. Naggum is perfectly rational in flaming me, since I really think his culture should be destroyed.
These are the things I see with c.l.lisp today: - it's been co-opted by Common Lisp, which is misleading for learners - discussion concentrates too much on little historical quirks, than on the deeper philosophy of Lisp - more rewarding for some denizens to write pages of flames rather than make a nice website to simply link to - it's a natural meeting place for new people, but is not geared towards them - like some software packages, both lisp users and software have grown sophisticated enough that the community has become forbidding to new folk - some smart people are emotionally sensitive, but that is no reason to lose their thoughts
I did contribute something decent to c.l.lisp, at least so said the people at Lambda the Ultimate; the Backus paper "Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?" http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
For all the "lisp" (really Common Lisp) advocacy here, no one mentioned it. I had to stumble upon it via a random google search. It's a million times more convincing than normal lisp advocacy, but even knowledgable profs haven't found it on the net. Therefore, c.l.lisp is a suspect place for really understanding the philosophy of lisp. You probably can't expect a broad, evenhanded discussion here.
Clearly all this means it's sort of up to someone like me to play the archaeologist and write up what I've learned about lisp, in a way that new learners can appreciate the power and tradeoffs of the lisp family. While I for some reason feel religious feelings towards lambda, smart learners need to be respected.
Well, those are my thoughts. Maybe they can form into something useful.
* Robert Hanlin | Naggum is perfectly rational in flaming me, since I really think his | culture should be destroyed.
Thanks for your candor.
| - some smart people are emotionally sensitive, but that is no reason | to lose their thoughts
I think the best approach is to invite people over to an entirely different service where they can have some say over the noise level. Usenet with a volume knob, so to speak. Since the number of opinionated idiots on the Net is only increasing, and good people leave because people like you want to destroy what made it interesting to use the forum, there is no other option but to give the interesting people an opportunity to be relieved of idiots.
| You probably can't expect a broad, evenhanded discussion here.
/You/ sure cannot expect that.
-- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Today, the sum total of the money I would retain from the offers in the more than 7500 Nigerian 419 scam letters received in the past 33 months would have exceeded USD 100,000,000,000. You can stop sending me more offers, now.
> I did contribute something decent to c.l.lisp, at least so said the > people at Lambda the Ultimate; the Backus paper "Can Programming Be > Liberated from the von Neumann Style?" > http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
Did you contribute the paper, or the link to it?
> For all the "lisp" (really Common Lisp) advocacy here, no one > mentioned it. I had to stumble upon it via a random google search. > It's a million times more convincing than normal lisp advocacy, but > even knowledgable profs haven't found it on the net.
Until now, I would have thought that paper was routinely mentioned in the course of the first or second year in any decent computer science curriculum, but I must have been wrong.
Robert Hanlin wrote: > I would personally like to see c.l.lisp invaded, to be a place where > there can be interesting discussion for people who are new to lisp.
Actually, newbies are well treated here in c.l.l. Even ilias was taken seriously and given solid advice until one by one we all gave up on him.
Gratuitous efforts such as yours to clean up c.l.l. only add to the noise. c.l.l. itself does not fret over c.l.l., and we are here day in and day out. Knights in shining armor need not apply.
We should file this under Troll Patterns. You are not the first to conclude that c.l.l. in general and EN in particular contribute significantly to lisp being less popular than other languages, and go so far as to try to raise a lynch mob to silence him. Never works. (Your "seem to recall...huge problem...EN as representative" is not supported by the archives.)
The pattern includes: such folk then blame c.l.l. for complicity or cowardice rather than accept that they have misjudged things. But that is terribly condescending towards the veterans here, so the trolls then have tarred themselves with unsociability and soon stomp out the c.l.l. door muttering unkind parting shots at us all.
> Naggum is perfectly rational in flaming me, since I really think his > culture should be destroyed.
Oh, please. Sound the trumpets! Turn loose the hounds! Way too self-important and grandiose. Simply joining c.l.l. and making positive contributions would have been more consistent with your stated goal. Even taking issue with others as you see fit is dandy. Just speak for yourself and ease up on the crusadespeak.
Sorry for nagging you, but try as I might I have not been able to break into the Top Ten statistics around here so I am posting articles I usually discard once composed.
findler_lam...@yahoo.com (Robert Hanlin) writes: > Kenny Tilton <ktil...@nyc.rr.com> wrote: > > There are two kinds of folks on the Usenet. Those who engage in > > protracted hand-to-hand combat with other posters, and those who do not.
> Don't worry, this is the first time I've started replying to his > posts, and it's clarified my thinking on what's missing from the lisp > community. I'm sorry if it's been stressful for anyone else, but at > least it was enlightening for me.
No stress here. I just hope it's not too stressful for you, once you realize your thinking isn't as clear as you think.
> I would personally like to see c.l.lisp invaded, to be a place where > there can be interesting discussion for people who are new to lisp. > Naggum is perfectly rational in flaming me, since I really think his > culture should be destroyed.
There are many ways to interpret this paragraph:
1. Erik Naggum is a cultured person, and he should be turned into a barbarian. 2. Some Lisp purists should come into c.l.l and destroy Erik's pet culture, Common Lisp. 3. Someone should break into Erik's lab and destroy his petri dishes.
Others, anyone?
> These are the things I see with c.l.lisp today:
OK, but I don't see them the same way as you do:
> - it's been co-opted by Common Lisp, which is misleading for learners
Let's talk about the history of Common Lisp. In a nutshell, it was an effort by Lisp users and vendors of many different philosophies and dialects to come together as one, and Common Lisp was the result. Yes, Common Lisp was co-opted as Lisp, by Lispers, if you take the first meaning of the word co-opt in my dictionary (which means "to vote into a body by joint action or by votes of the existing members" (World Book). After the co-opting, users of most of the other Lisp dialects chose willingly to abandon their dialects, with a few exceptions (scheme, elisp, and autolisp being the most obvious).
> - discussion concentrates too much on little historical quirks, than > on the deeper philosophy of Lisp
Hmm, I see you're stuck on Lambda Calculus and FP. What makes you think that these define Lisp today?
> - more rewarding for some denizens to write pages of flames rather > than make a nice website to simply link to
> - it's a natural meeting place for new people, but is not geared > towards them
The internet is definitely _not_ a good place to meet new people.
> - like some software packages, both lisp users and software have grown > sophisticated enough that the community has become forbidding to new > folk
I had thought that this list of yours was one which you considered to be Bad Things. How is this a Bad Thing? If I ever need surgery, I am certainly grateful that the community of surgeons doesn't make it too easy for new folk to join.
> - some smart people are emotionally sensitive, but that is no reason > to lose their thoughts
Take care for your own sensitivities, lest you get lost in your own thoughts.
> I did contribute something decent to c.l.lisp, at least so said the > people at Lambda the Ultimate; the Backus paper "Can Programming Be > Liberated from the von Neumann Style?" > http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
> For all the "lisp" (really Common Lisp) advocacy here, no one > mentioned it. I had to stumble upon it via a random google search. > It's a million times more convincing than normal lisp advocacy, but > even knowledgable profs haven't found it on the net. Therefore, > c.l.lisp is a suspect place for really understanding the philosophy of > lisp. You probably can't expect a broad, evenhanded discussion here.
Of course not. After all, we are talking about Pure Functional Lisp, here, aren't we?
Why would we want to mention a paper which only mentions Lisp 3 times, once by reference to McCarthy (whom I'd rather reference directly), and twice referring to Pure Lisp (which it even admits doesn't exist)? How is such a paper enlightening? How is it possibly evenhanded?
> Clearly all this means it's sort of up to someone like me to play the > archaeologist and write up what I've learned about lisp, in a way that > new learners can appreciate the power and tradeoffs of the lisp > family.
I'd be delighted to see your theorys about what makes Lisp powerful and separates it from other languages. Draw on all the archaeology you desire.
> While I for some reason feel religious feelings towards > lambda, smart learners need to be respected.
Hmm, religious feelings? Shouldn't that be Lambda then?
> Well, those are my thoughts. Maybe they can form into something > useful.
> Kenny Tilton <ktil...@nyc.rr.com> wrote: >> There are two kinds of folks on the Usenet. Those who engage in >> protracted hand-to-hand combat with other posters, and those who do not.
> Don't worry, this is the first time I've started replying to his > posts, and it's clarified my thinking on what's missing from the lisp > community. I'm sorry if it's been stressful for anyone else, but at > least it was enlightening for me.
> I would personally like to see c.l.lisp invaded, to be a place where > there can be interesting discussion for people who are new to lisp. > Naggum is perfectly rational in flaming me, since I really think his > culture should be destroyed.
From what I have seen of Eriks culuture here is the culture of a master craftsman who takes great pride in his craft and tools. And he is more then willing to help new people learn lisp/programming, as long as you behave in a professional and adult mannor. People who do not behave this way get incouraged to do so in his unique style. In fact my first interaction with Erik was getting a dose of his uniq corrective language in responce to a a post of mine. The odd thing was he was right, so I apoligized and that was the end of it. I have also seen Erik apoligize here when he has been shown to be wrong, to his satisfaction.
The other attatude is the learn X in 21 days crapola. Well I do not think that is any way to build a carier that is mesured in decades.
Remember learning a craft is like growing up, when you get to 30 or so you tend to relize that dam near all the stuff that your parents taught you, or tried to when you were 16 and knew it all, was correct.
> These are the things I see with c.l.lisp today: > - it's been co-opted by Common Lisp, which is misleading for learners
What other versions of "lisp" are out there in widespread use do not have their own news groups?
> - discussion concentrates too much on little historical quirks, than > on the deeper philosophy of Lisp
zen and the art of lisp coding???
> - more rewarding for some denizens to write pages of flames rather > than make a nice website to simply link to
Are you saying that people should put up websites full of flames and just link to it? And why do you think that Erik finds it rewarding? Could it be he just feels it may be nessary to do?
> - it's a natural meeting place for new people, but is not geared > towards them
No place worth staying is geared to new people. When it is for new people they leave when they are not new. I want a place that is for experts so I have a shot at becoming one by learning from them.
> - like some software packages, both lisp users and software have grown > sophisticated enough that the community has become forbidding to new > folk
There is a cost of entry, both socal ant technical. If you do not want to pay it fine you will not get in.
> - some smart people are emotionally sensitive, but that is no reason > to lose their thoughts
But are they well manored? If they are civil or try to be they do not get flamed, most of the time.
> I did contribute something decent to c.l.lisp, at least so said the > people at Lambda the Ultimate; the Backus paper "Can Programming Be > Liberated from the von Neumann Style?" > http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
> For all the "lisp" (really Common Lisp) advocacy here, no one
I just took a quick look at it, it is an APL paper from what I skimed. And this is what you consider a real meaningful contrabution to the group, one url from a google search? You want praise and respect for that? It apears that you set very low standards for yourself, you should fix that.
> mentioned it. I had to stumble upon it via a random google search. > It's a million times more convincing than normal lisp advocacy, but > even knowledgable profs haven't found it on the net. Therefore, > c.l.lisp is a suspect place for really understanding the philosophy of > lisp. You probably can't expect a broad, evenhanded discussion here.
> Clearly all this means it's sort of up to someone like me to play the > archaeologist and write up what I've learned about lisp, in a way that > new learners can appreciate the power and tradeoffs of the lisp > family. While I for some reason feel religious feelings towards > lambda, smart learners need to be respected.
I am reminded of a quote from the Supranos, "If you want respect you give respect" rough quote. You do not apear to give respect to others so why should other people give you any?
> Well, those are my thoughts. Maybe they can form into something > useful.
Here are some things for you to think about:
On a purly practical level Erik is very useful and you have not proven to be of much, if any, use.
And once you start down this path you are in for a long haul and you will not win from what I have seen here.
Robert Hanlin wrote: > These are the things I see with c.l.lisp today: > - it's been co-opted by Common Lisp, which is misleading for learners
In what way? Which "learners" are being confused? What other Lisp vehicles are available to learners? If by the previous, you mean scheme or emacs lisp, there are other newsgroups better suited towards them. If by learning Lisp philosophy, it probably cannot be well-taught outside the context of a particular Lisp, which leads you back to either Common Lisp or other languages or dialects with other, more appropriate newsgroups. If you want to cry over dead implementations like T or OakLisp, that's just too pathetic for words.
> - discussion concentrates too much on little historical quirks, than > on the deeper philosophy of Lisp
I haven't seen this. I would not be so arrogant to think that I could understand Western philosophy without also understanding historical "quirks" such as Greek democracy or that rise of Papal power in Western Europe. Why do you think you can understand the "deeper philosophy of Lisp" without understanding some of the historical features behind its development?
> - more rewarding for some denizens to write pages of flames rather > than make a nice website to simply link to
Well, we try to keep the riff-raff out, but folks like you keep butting back in...
> - it's a natural meeting place for new people, but is not geared > towards them
Why should it be geared towards them? I think one of the worst things that has happened to newsgroups is that people have come to believe that they can waltz into them without even having done a Google search on the topic, say "Explain it all to me in two sentences", and expect an answer other than "Fuck off, you lazy little shit." You seem to think that being lazy and unprepared is a virtue that grants some sort of nobility of naivete upon the idiot. This is a stupid idea. In addition, if someone comes in and asks a question about Lisp that is obviously not homework, most people here give answers in the spirit that question was asked. The only time I have seen someone talked harshly to is if, after receiving the answer to their question, they say something like "That's stupid," or "I don't think it should be that way," at which point it is pointed out to them that maybe they ought to learn something about the language before they stoop to criticize it.
> - some smart people are emotionally sensitive, but that is no reason > to lose their thoughts
I haven't noticed any thoughts being lost.
> I did contribute something decent to c.l.lisp, at least so said the > people at Lambda the Ultimate; the Backus paper "Can Programming Be > Liberated from the von Neumann Style?" > http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
Yeah, most of us around here read Backus' paper when it was published as a Turing Award lecture in the days before CACM became dumbed down by attitudes akin to your desire to be relevant to newbies and oher denizens of the unwashed masses. A great contribution you have made, pointing out a paper that is 20+ years old, well-known in the community, and has little to do with Lisp, per se. Maybe if you actually become familiar with the literature, you can find something that is actually useful.
> For all the "lisp" (really Common Lisp) advocacy here, no one > mentioned it.
Mainly becuase it's old and has little to do with Lisp. Besides you were just bitching about us being too focused on "historical quirks", which is what FP was. And, in case you haven't noticed, since that paper, there's been a whole world of functional programming research that's been done. Why is this research (which is more timely and probably just as relevant) not more noticable than Backus' FP paper?
> I had to stumble upon it via a random google search.
At least you did one. Thank you for that, at least.
> It's a million times more convincing than normal lisp advocacy, but > even knowledgable profs haven't found it on the net. Therefore, > c.l.lisp is a suspect place for really understanding the philosophy of > lisp. You probably can't expect a broad, evenhanded discussion here.
So you're having a little public snit because your expectations weren't met. Tell me why I should care?
> Clearly all this means it's sort of up to someone like me to play the > archaeologist and write up what I've learned about lisp, in a way that > new learners can appreciate the power and tradeoffs of the lisp > family. While I for some reason feel religious feelings towards > lambda, smart learners need to be respected.
There are already plenty of documents out there that do a good job. Because you haven't found them, don't assume (a) that they don't exist or (b) that you can do better. You could actually start with the papers from the two HOPL proceedings on Lisp. These are historically valid, being written by people who were there at the time (McCarthy for the first, and Gabriel and Steele for the second) and give tons of references to other good material. As for your own paper, please, have at it - when we see your result, it might actually be reasonable. Just make sure that it's well researched an factual before you go off spouting.
> Well, those are my thoughts. Maybe they can form into something > useful.
Form your thoughts into something useful first, then figure out if your little snit was worth having.
In article <c427d639.0209292034.55c74...@posting.google.com>, findler_lam...@yahoo.com (Robert Hanlin) wrote:
> I did contribute something decent to c.l.lisp, at least so said the > people at Lambda the Ultimate; the Backus paper "Can Programming Be > Liberated from the von Neumann Style?" > http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
> For all the "lisp" (really Common Lisp) advocacy here, no one > mentioned it. I had to stumble upon it via a random google search. > It's a million times more convincing than normal lisp advocacy, but > even knowledgable profs haven't found it on the net.
I just read this paper again. The last time was in probably 1983. It's interesting that it had a big effect on me back then, but now I can see that he *totally* missed the subsequent major developments in computer architecture that allow modern computers to largely side-step the von Neumann bottleneck. Our RAM chips today have maybe 1/20th of the latency of the RAM available when that paper was written, but computers are more than 10,000 times faster.
Not that this negates his points about FP in the long run, but it sure has extended the practical lifetime of FORTRAN/C by a lot.
Kenny Tilton <ktil...@nyc.rr.com> wrote: > Gratuitous efforts such as yours to clean up c.l.l. only add to the > noise. c.l.l. itself does not fret over c.l.l., and we are here day in > and day out. Knights in shining armor need not apply.
Of course. Obviously your episode with ilias is one that will eventually reach some nice conclusion, since while this is an unmoderated forum, you guys have more investment and patience here than do others. The downside is that a) you need to spend time managing the forum and b) some good people don't have the patience and leave. Erik sort of sacrifices himself as a necessity, and while he occasionally kills off people who actually seem to be fine contributing members to other forums (I've received a couple letters from them), them's the breaks. Obviously no one likes that unclean result.
Certainly, Naggum's assessment of my posts are right, and I notice he's written two more posts that I have no interest in reading. Those two minutes of his life are wasted, another demonstration of the messiness of his job.
> Simply joining c.l.l. and making positive > contributions would have been more consistent with your stated goal. > Even taking issue with others as you see fit is dandy. Just speak for > yourself and ease up on the crusadespeak.
I have no intention of actually following up on what I said, which makes me a troll. Fortunately I do personally know people who are actually doing what I alluded to, so no loss to you. There are other mitigating factors. c.l.lisp is not the only place to discuss lisp. There is a good body of literature on the subject which makes a lot of discussion redundant. And the case studies of AI companies put things like the Lisp Machine in perspective. No real complaints.
Vassil Nikolov <vnikolo...@poboxes.com> wrote: > Did you contribute the paper, or the link to it?
I can't tell if you are asking me if I scanned it in for cs242 or are asking me a rhetorical question whether I wrote it. If the former, with all respect I already answered this; and if the latter, it's probably a pointless piece of discussion if people who need it most can't conveniently read it at leisure. (I didn't intend to credit myself like Prometheus, if you happen to imply that.)
> Until now, I would have thought that paper was routinely mentioned in > the course of the first or second year in any decent computer science > curriculum, but I must have been wrong.
It is mentioned as a footnote in SICP. But clearly "decent computer science curriculums" do not hold much power over the IT industry. (And I think you would like the industry to produce commodity machines that run CS languages elegantly.) Maybe that's not a bad thing; the industry is a domain where certain factors dominate pure technical competence.
