Patrick <x...@yahoo.com.au> writes: > Robert STRANDH <stra...@labri.u-bordeaux.fr> writes:
> Presumably you have taught other languages as well as Lisp. If so, > have you noticed any remarkable differences between the way students > respond to Lisp, compared with other languages? ie. is the ratio of > those who become passionate about Lisp noticeably different from the > ratio of those who become passionate about other languages?
Hard to say. But I do know that when I switched from Scheme to Common Lisp, things worked much better. The students are very sensitive to credibility. Scheme is just not credible in the eyes of the students. I got into eternal discussions about speed of implementations, the necessity of adding your own object system, lack of required numeric types, etc. When I listened to my own arguments, they did not sound convincing.
I have also taught C quite a lot, but it is hard to compare the two.
> Or, have you noticed a difference in the _type_ of people who respond > well to Lisp, in comparison with other languages?
Yes, I think so. The ones that "get" Lisp, and especially the ones that become passionate, are the very best students. People who become passionate about C or C++ are more the ones that have a need to be members of a club at the exclusions of others, with no real technical reason why.
This is all based on informal observation. And it is average behavior, of course.
-- Robert Strandh
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, I understand that. I say you're wrong. Please try to pry your > brain open just wide enough to grasp the possibility that not everyone > who disagrees with you does so because they haven't understood what > you're trying to say.
I find it rather curious that you think this approach will work.
> Hogwash, as is easily demonstrated: Listen up, everyone! Java sucks > big fat weenies! No go and see if anyone is abandoning Java as a > result of my overwhelming negativism.
This is particularly mature to be you, but still does nothing to falsify my conclusions about your general immaturity and lack of intelligence.
Are you a strong and vocal member of the Java community, Erann Gat? Do you post this immature filth in Java newsgroups? If you are not, what was that again about "pry open your brain"? Do you think anyone will _listen_ to such immature crap? Any random idiot can flame at that level without consequence. It is substantial criticism based on a different agenda than that which was underlying the design of the language that is the problem. Some people hate Common Lisp for not being Scheme, but they cloak their "criticism" in such a way as to make people believe that Common Lisp is inherently flawed. One needs to be unusually intelligent to be able to figure out what these nutballs really have a problem with.
If Guy Steele or James Gosling or Bill Joy went on record to say they think "Java sucks big fat weenies" (or preferably something intelligent) to the Java community, do you think that would make it slightly more interesting than that a fairly immature little runt like you does it here? If you do not understand this point, you really _have_ not understood anything.
> Again, hogwash. I used Common Lisp for twenty years pretty much to > the eclusion of all other languages. I loved most of it, hated some > of it, felt neutral about some of it, and some of it I simply never > understood. I used the parts I loved, ignored the parts I hated to > the extent possible (the package system was hard to avoid), and > struggled with the parts I didn't understand.
And you still do not understand that the fact that you ignore the parts you hate is just what makes you a little different from the people who post long and painfully disturbed messages about what they hate about the language, and keep arguing against the language and the standard and the standardization process because they were once "spurned" by it?
> The world is full of hollowness and insincerity. So what?
Just the kind of commentary I expect from you.
> Some of what you call hollowness and insincerity I call civility, and I > think it's a feature.
I have long suspected that that would be the operating definition of your civility, but thank you for making it clear to us all.
> Love and hate are two extremes on a continuum, not a binary choice.
Really? Thank you for sharing such a profoundly important insight!
> BTW, the hollowest and insincerest people I know are the faith healers, > whose rhetoric sounds a lot like yours, but with "Jesus" substituted for > "Lisp": "There are those who claim to love Jesus, but who continue to > live lives of sin. These people do not truly love the Lord Jesus."
Again, this is a very powerful reflection your life and life experiences. I am so glad I have nothing of your life experiences to drag me down. It would be awful.
Pull yourself together and engage your brain, Erann Gat. The stupidity you posted so far only indicates that you are going nuts very quickly.
> Precisely! I don't care if you love Lisp or hate it. I don't care if > you badmouth the loop macro (I happen to love loop myself) or diss the > standard. What I care about is that you *do* something with Lisp that > I can point to as a success story so I can stop the endless bickering > with my managers and get some work done for a change!
But why would anyone do that if you keep posting your hatred for Lisp and denigrate the language, its suppliers, its users, those who do love the language, and almost everything else related to Common Lisp?
I actually believe you may be just so dense that you do not understand the connection, probably because of your dismal life experiences and your interaction with your managers in particular. There sure seems to be same core problem with you as with other negativists: They fail to get over their negative experiences, but keep them in the forefront of their mind. You sure have a hangup bordering on a mental illness when it comes to your reactions to anything I say. _Normal_ people get over things. Nutcases do not. It is one of the important point of distinction.
> If you are genuinely worried about the long term viability of a software > supplier, what is keeping you from entering into a source code escrow > agreement for the products your business depends on?
Why, that would clearly make it impossible to continue to rant and rave about all the problems of using Common Lisp.
He is not genuinely worried at all. Like so many others who feel they have been mistreated and betrayed, they really, really want to destroy what they think mistreated and betrayed them. Normal people get over such experiences and just move on to what they _really_ want. Those who had what they really wanted thwarted by mistreatment or betrayal seem to have a problem finding something else to really want. This is a personal tragedy and should not have any bearing on programming languages or their communities, but for Common Lisp, such things do seem to affect us.
> Hard to say. But I do know that when I switched from Scheme to Common > Lisp, things worked much better. The students are very sensitive to > credibility. Scheme is just not credible in the eyes of the students. I > got into eternal discussions about speed of implementations, the > necessity of adding your own object system, lack of required numeric > types, etc. When I listened to my own arguments, they did not sound > convincing.
This is extraordinarily interesting! I expect serious professionals to see through the Scheme propaganda, but if students do it, it is great! There is perhaps enough material for a conformance paper on this, and if so, I would love to hear you speak about it.
> The ones that "get" Lisp, and especially the ones that become passionate, > are the very best students. People who become passionate about C or C++ > are more the ones that have a need to be members of a club at the > exclusions of others, with no real technical reason why.
This matches my own experience to a t. I thought I was alone, however.
> This is all based on informal observation. And it is average behavior, > of course.
Sometimes, that is all we have, but it is nonetheless interesting to hear.
Joe Nall <j...@nall.com> writes: > Erann Gat wrote:
> > you Alice, wherever you are.) Corman is a one-man operation. There's > > no street address, no phone number, not even a .com Web address. I've > > not used Corman Lisp, so I can't judge its quality; it may be the > > greatest thing since sliced bread. But if you go to a manager and > www.corman.net , another business owns corman.com Street address is > on http://www.corman.net/license.html 200$ buys you a solid product > with excellent support that can build stand alone win32 > executables. I just built a simple gui program, copied it to a > _floppy_ and ran it on another machine that had never been touched > by Lisp before. As for the support issue, it has been excellent. > Source for the compiler and runtime are included, mitigating > concerns about it being a one man operation. We recently got to > watch Agillion sell over a hundred Herman Miller chairs in their > dot-bomb auction. The importance of size and glitz are over-rated, > even pointy-haired-bosses can be made happy with source code and low > risk. > On a philosophical note. You are creating the problem, not > describing it. Some people will search google and see your ignorant, > denigrating comments about Digitool and Corman and not buy well > supported, good products.
The simple fact that there are multiple vendors spreads the risks more ways, and diminishes the costs of coping with the risks.
Even taking the most negative view, of Corman being a one man shop, the fact that it's selling a standardized language, with multiple implementations available, means that code can be taken elsewhere if Corman's support flags.
It doesn't mean that such a process would be cheap or trivially easy, just that if your code is built to be not _too_ heavily dependant on Corman-specific features, a port should be doable. (Substitute "Digitool" or "Franz" or "Xanalys" as needed...)
Contrast this with, let's say:
- Coding in ML, and depending on Harlequin's support, which _did_ flag, with no answer available;
- Depending on Apple's support for Dylan;
- Depending on the developers of Clean to forever make support available;
- Coding an application that you hope to use in 2010 using this year's version of Visual BASIC, when it's more than likely that it won't be deployable anymore by 2005...
Coding in C or C++ involves cutting risks in similar ways, since there are multiple makers of C/C++ compilers... -- (reverse (concatenate 'string "moc.enworbbc@" "enworbbc")) http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/finances.html An engineer is someone who does list processing in FORTRAN.
> It doesn't mean that such a process would be cheap or trivially easy, > just that if your code is built to be not _too_ heavily dependant on > Corman-specific features, a port should be doable. (Substitute > "Digitool" or "Franz" or "Xanalys" as needed...)
> Contrast this with, let's say:
> - Coding in ML, and depending on Harlequin's support, which _did_ > flag, with no answer available;
> - Depending on Apple's support for Dylan;
> - Depending on the developers of Clean to forever make support > available;
> - Coding an application that you hope to use in 2010 using this > year's version of Visual BASIC, when it's more than likely that > it won't be deployable anymore by 2005...
And, if I may:
- Coding in a version of Common Lisp that deviates from the standard for political reasons and whose deviations vary according to which developer team was last responsible for maintaining the sources.
However, more important to me than code portability is knowledge portability. You can always figure out how to survive a version change if you have the right people already. It is harder to find people who are willing to dispense with their years of training and experience with a conforming implementation and have them come and look at some weird shit that uses weird macros and overly verbose iteration constructs just because someone, somewhere has irrational feelings about the standard.
g...@flownet.com (Erann Gat) writes: > Xanalys is the resurrection a bankrupt Harlequin, which was acquired > not for its Lisp technolgy, but for its electronic publishing > technology.
Not quite right, actually.
Xanalys does NOT due the electronic publishing thing. Harlequin still exists and does. Xanalys is the spin-off that does SPECIFICALLY the Lisp-based and layered Information technologies. See their web site. The original purchase by Global Graphics may have been as you say, but Xanalys is itself a financially distinct concern with its own concern that directly and indirectly addresses the Lisp products.
> The Lisp product just sort of came along for the ride, > and many of the key Lisp people (you included) aren't working there > any more.
The people you know. Their real key people have never had their names bandied about and several are still there.
I myself used Lisp a lot but was never directly a Lisp maintainer. The loss of me had no effect on the Lisp product per se.
I prefer to be a user / critic rather than a producer. I was working on the standard itself for a long time, and then on WebMaker (a FrameMaker to HTML translation tool) while I was there.
> That would give me pause in betting on Xanalys as a stable > long-term provider even *before* reading what Franz has to say about > them.
Hopefully what I said will give you reason to reconsider both your posture and the importance of letting a company speak for itself. I'm not a Xanalys employee and probably even my point of view is not quite right, but I think it's closer than what you said.
> > Digitool's Lisp (which BTW and IMO is the greatest single software > > product ever) runs only on a niche platform that is itself rapidly > > losing market share. The company, as far as I can tell, is hanging on > > by its fingernails. They don't even have a street address any more, > > just a PO box. I am frankly astonished that version 4.3.1 actually > > happened.
> I am not at all surprised by the arrival of 4.3.1. If it is astonishment > for you, I think you haven't followed MCL/Digitool recently and should > revise your perception on the current shape of Digitool. They're working > on the MCL port for OSX right now.
On what basis should I revise my perception? comp.lang.lisp.mcl has virtually no traffic. Their street address has been replaced with a PO Box. The "people" page on their site has disappeared. They haven't advertised a job opening in years. These are not the signs of a vigorous, healthy company.
> > Alice must be putting in a truly heroic effort. (Good for you Alice, > > wherever you are.)
> Declaring [falsely] that Digitool is out of business won't help her a > bit.
Of course. That's why I made no such declaration. But declaring that Digitool is thriving when it clearly isn't won't help anyone either.
> But declaring that Digitool is thriving when it clearly isn't won't help > anyone either.
Maybe the problem is that perception creates reality? Just the way your perception of me creates the reality you respond to me in out of thin air, maybe it _would_ help if you just shut up about all the negative stuff that seems to be dripping out of your mouth half involuntarily?
My point in this thread has been that the impression people like you _love_ to create about Common Lisp is part of the reason it is having a hard time, and consequently, why you have a hard time with your manager. Just like another poster here, I think this is more personal than anything else -- you create your own reality as far as perceptions go, and the reality you create is one where Common Lisp has serious problems. That is not necessarily true. If you tried to look at it differently, just as you could look at me differently, you would find something else. But somehow, I suspect that that is not in your personality, and we will just have to live with a insane rants about me and Common Lisp from you.
Please consider it a service to the community and to yourself to just shut up, Erann Gat.
In article <f8ck7.49819$Hr2.4833...@news20.bellglobal.com>,
cbbro...@acm.org wrote: > The simple fact that there are multiple vendors spreads the risks more > ways, and diminishes the costs of coping with the risks.
That's true, but having the source code yourself spreads the risks even more.
> Even taking the most negative view, of Corman being a one man shop, > the fact that it's selling a standardized language, with multiple > implementations available, means that code can be taken elsewhere if > Corman's support flags.
True.
> It doesn't mean that such a process would be cheap or trivially easy, > just that if your code is built to be not _too_ heavily dependant on > Corman-specific features, a port should be doable. (Substitute > "Digitool" or "Franz" or "Xanalys" as needed...)
> Contrast this with, let's say:
> - Coding in ML, and depending on Harlequin's support, which _did_ > flag, with no answer available;
There are multiple ML implementations. OCaml is probably the best implemented (yes, I know it's not identical to ML), and is well supported and you get the source code. So you can fix problems yourself even if there is no support.
> - Depending on Apple's support for Dylan;
Fortunately there are two other implementations. Harlequin's, which has much the same problem as Harlequin's other stuff, but is at least in the hands of people who care about it. It appears to be kind of moribund at the moment, but I doubt that they'll allow it to die completely. And then there's the free "Gwydion" Dylan, from the same stable as CMUCL. It's less mature, but improving steadily and you can fix problems yourself even if there is no support. Right now it is entirely suitable for doing command-line/batch/CGI work and it will have good GUI support shortly (once Harlequin's DUIM is fully ported).
> - Depending on the developers of Clean to forever make support > available;
They're in the process of going open source, so you can fix problems yourself.
> - Coding an application that you hope to use in 2010 using this > year's version of Visual BASIC, when it's more than likely that > it won't be deployable anymore by 2005...
You're correct about this one.
> Coding in C or C++ involves cutting risks in similar ways, since there > are multiple makers of C/C++ compilers...
Fewer and fewer as time goes on. It's nearly compulsory to use VC++ on Windows, CodeWarrior on the Mac, and gcc elsewhere.
> > > Digitool's Lisp (which BTW and IMO is the greatest single software > > > product ever) runs only on a niche platform that is itself rapidly > > > losing market share. The company, as far as I can tell, is hanging on > > > by its fingernails. They don't even have a street address any more, > > > just a PO box. I am frankly astonished that version 4.3.1 actually > > > happened.
> > I am not at all surprised by the arrival of 4.3.1. If it is astonishment > > for you, I think you haven't followed MCL/Digitool recently and should > > revise your perception on the current shape of Digitool. They're working > > on the MCL port for OSX right now.
> On what basis should I revise my perception? comp.lang.lisp.mcl has > virtually no traffic.
Because MCL users are using a mailing list. Don't you know that?
> Their street address has been replaced with a > PO Box. The "people" page on their site has disappeared. They > haven't advertised a job opening in years. These are not the signs of > a vigorous, healthy company.
> > > Alice must be putting in a truly heroic effort. (Good for you Alice, > > > wherever you are.)
> > Declaring [falsely] that Digitool is out of business won't help her a > > bit.
> Of course. That's why I made no such declaration. But declaring that > Digitool is thriving when it clearly isn't won't help anyone either.
> E.
Erann, Digitool was never a very active company. But especially in the last few months there was a lot of positive action:
- OpenMCL has been published. With Gary Byers (one of the original MCL developers) hacking OpenMCL!
- MCL 4.3.1 appeared. MCL 4.3.1 can run as a classic application under MacOS X.
- MCL 4.4 is in the works. MCL 4.4 will be a "carbonized" version of MCL. This is actually very cool. I like it. Quite a few MCL users are waiting for it to be published.
Compared to the fear I had that MCL will never make it to the PowerPC when Apple years ago no longer was interested in MCL, I'm now very confident that we will see future versions of MCL and that MCL will make the transition to MacOS X. So, I actually have less fears for MCL than in recent years.
When it comes to the PO box address, I can tell you that I talked to real people (http://www.digitool.com/staff.html) the last time I saw some of them - hi Steve! They are very friendly Lisp hackers and I admire their technical skills a lot. Be nice to them, they deserve it.
Hey, for students the entry license of Macintosh Common Lisp is just $85!
For non-Mac users, Xanalys will show the upcoming LispWorks 4.2 at LinuxWorld in Frankfurt/Germany. Xanalys Ltd, Hall 6.0, booth E24 http://www.linuxworldexpo.de/
> Digitool was never a very active company. But especially in the last few > months there was a lot of positive action:
Thanks for posting this. However, I have a small gripe: This stuff was published only because someone said something stupid and negative about the company. It is very nice to see such rotten behavior countered with real and positive information and good news, but maybe it should have been better known to begin with?
Christophe Rhodes <cs...@cam.ac.uk> writes: > this framework. The major change from pathnames that I envisage is > that there is no easy way of specifying a relative pathname; while
I think you mean "will be no easy way of specifying a relative URI"
> #p"foo/bar.lisp" gives you a pathname with directory (:relative > "foo"), #u"foo/bar.lisp" would give you something merged with the > current value of *default-uri-defaults*; I think that this would solve > quite a few problems that are felt with pathnames.
Addendum for anyone who wasn't following the debate the last time we did relative pathnames on comp.lang.lisp: the reason #p"foo/bar.lisp" is surprising (at least, it surprised me) is that it defaults the :host component from the :host component of *default-pathname-defaults*.
So, you can specify relative pathnames with ease, but they're never _entirely_ relative ...
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes: > * Rainer Joswig <jos...@corporate-world.lisp.de> > > Digitool was never a very active company. But especially in the > > last few months there was a lot of positive action: > Thanks for posting this. However, I have a small gripe: This stuff > was published only because someone said something stupid and > negative about the company. It is very nice to see such rotten > behavior countered with real and positive information and good news, > but maybe it should have been better known to begin with?
This is a classic problem; it is entirely common for the "good news" not to get publicized until it _needs_ to be because someone claimed otherwise. -- (concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" "@ntlug.org") http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/languages.html All ITS machines now have hardware for a new machine instruction -- STMLMD Skip To My Lou, My Darlin'. Please update your programs.
> > Xanalys is the resurrection a bankrupt Harlequin, which was acquired > > not for its Lisp technolgy, but for its electronic publishing > > technology.
> Not quite right, actually.
> Xanalys does NOT due the electronic publishing thing. Harlequin still > exists and does. Xanalys is the spin-off that does SPECIFICALLY the > Lisp-based and layered Information technologies. See their web site. > The original purchase by Global Graphics may have been as you say, but > Xanalys is itself a financially distinct concern with its own concern > that directly and indirectly addresses the Lisp products.
> > The Lisp product just sort of came along for the ride, > > and many of the key Lisp people (you included) aren't working there > > any more.
> The people you know. Their real key people have never had their names > bandied about and several are still there.
> I myself used Lisp a lot but was never directly a Lisp maintainer. > The loss of me had no effect on the Lisp product per se.
> I prefer to be a user / critic rather than a producer. I was working on > the standard itself for a long time, and then on WebMaker (a FrameMaker to > HTML translation tool) while I was there.
> > That would give me pause in betting on Xanalys as a stable > > long-term provider even *before* reading what Franz has to say about > > them.
> Hopefully what I said will give you reason to reconsider both your posture > and the importance of letting a company speak for itself. I'm not a Xanalys > employee and probably even my point of view is not quite right, but I think > it's closer than what you said.
Well, I actually did let Xanalys speak for itself. I went to their Web site and clicked on "products". Four products came up. Lisp was the fourth one. I clicked on it and nothing happened. This left me with the impression that Franz was telling the truth and Xanalys really was letting Lisp languish. It turns out that the page is Javascript-dependent, and I had JS switched off. (Attention Xanalys folks: you really need a <noscript> tag on that page.)
So I stand happily corrected: there are apparently two real Lisp vendors out there.
I stand by my broader point though. I disagree with Erik's claim that what Lisp needs is for people to express their unconditional love for it. I say what Lisp needs is for people to use it to build cool stuff and beat the pants off their competition. Whether they are motivated by love or something else is immaterial. I'll take a Paul Graham over an Erik Naggum any day. Whatever damage Paul does to Common Lisp by saying it sucks is more than offset by his publicizing the fact that he got rich using it. If we had ten Paul Grahams we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Lisp would be thriving. If we had ten Erik Naggums... nah, too scary to contemplate. (But if we had two Erik Naggums, now that would be interesting ;-)
> I stand by my broader point though. I disagree with Erik's claim that > what Lisp needs is for people to express their unconditional love for it. > I say what Lisp needs is for people to use it to build cool stuff and > beat the pants off their competition.
Sigh. The point with the love-your-language part was that people do not use the language for anything at all when they are mostly depressed about its lack of use and prominent people in the community beat it up all the time for personal reasons. You have yet to explain how people start to use something they do not use. I do not think you understand how people _decide_ to use something. My offer of an explanation is that people who love their language and get an up-beat, optimistic attitude about it, also use it. Obviously, this does not apply to you, who continue to prefer to be depressive and down-beat and just whine that people should use it. Do you have any clue at all what could _propel_ people to use Common Lisp to build cool stuff and beat the pants off their competition? It does not look like you do, since you keep repeating that incredibly obvious and vacuous line only because you want to beat me over the head for personal reasons.
> Whether they are motivated by love or something else is immaterial. > I'll take a Paul Graham over an Erik Naggum any day.
I can beat that. I would take John Foderaro over Erann Gat any day. :)
> Whatever damage Paul does to Common Lisp by saying it sucks is more than > offset by his publicizing the fact that he got rich using it.
Really? That is the part that I highly doubt. It is precisely that Paul Graham debunks Common Lisp _after_ he succeeded with it that is so depressing to other Common Lisp users. It makes it an _accident_ that he got rich using Common Lisp. He would have gotten rich using just about anything else, or so it seems.
> If we had ten Paul Grahams we wouldn't even be having this discussion. > Lisp would be thriving. If we had ten Erik Naggums... nah, too scary to > contemplate. (But if we had two Erik Naggums, now that would be > interesting ;-)
You are such an idiot, Erann Gat. This is all so _personal_ to you. Get some professional help to _get over_ your personal problems. USENET is not a good place to engage in therapy sessions the way you keep doing. I mean that seriously. Bring print-outs of your articles to a shrink and he will tell you that you have a problem you _can_ get help to get out of.
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes: > [...] It makes it an _accident_ that he got rich using Common > Lisp. He would have gotten rich using just about anything else, > or so it seems.
I don't know much about Paul Graham but, at a glance, that does not seem to be a fair assessment of his position. In "Beating the Averages" he attributes a lot of his success to the help Lisp gave him.
Friedrich Dominicus <fr...@q-software-solutions.com> writes: > What a poor answer. Yes it's obviously better for you to pick out you > handerchief and cry a bit more.
I've never thought much of bullfighting as a sport. I like bulls too much. I like their earnest stupidity. I like their thick-headed bravery. I like their artlessness.
I also like the way you blunder blindly around this arena from time to time, charging at any red rag you can find. I know your triggers, Frido. The words "free software" and "popularity" are enough to set you running full tilt, and almost always at the wrong target. But to be perfectly honest with you, I don't feel anywhere near enough malice to want it any other way. Just keep doing what you do best, and best of luck to you.
(BTW, if you've got a spare handkerchief I can cry into, toro, I'd be much obliged. Red's my favourite colour).
> I don't know much about Paul Graham but, at a glance, that does not seem > to be a fair assessment of his position. In "Beating the Averages" he > attributes a lot of his success to the help Lisp gave him.
Deepak <URL:http://www.glue.umd.edu/~deego> -- You know you've spent too much time on the emacs when you spill milk and the first thing you think is "C-_"
> > > > Digitool's Lisp (which BTW and IMO is the greatest single software > > > > product ever) runs only on a niche platform that is itself rapidly > > > > losing market share. The company, as far as I can tell, is hanging on > > > > by its fingernails. They don't even have a street address any more, > > > > just a PO box. I am frankly astonished that version 4.3.1 actually > > > > happened.
> > > I am not at all surprised by the arrival of 4.3.1. If it is astonishment > > > for you, I think you haven't followed MCL/Digitool recently and should > > > revise your perception on the current shape of Digitool. They're working > > > on the MCL port for OSX right now.
> > On what basis should I revise my perception? comp.lang.lisp.mcl has > > virtually no traffic.
> Because MCL users are using a mailing list. Don't you know that?
I do. I subscribe to that list. I also know that the digitool site says:
Usenet News related to MCL news: comp.lang.lisp.mcl The MCL newsgroup is relayed bidirectionally to the Info-MCL mailing list.
So it would not be unreasonable to suppose that the newsgroup would contain any messges sent to the list.
> Erann, Digitool was never a very active company. But especially in > the last few months there was a lot of positive action:
> - OpenMCL has been published. With Gary Byers (one of the original > MCL developers) hacking OpenMCL!
> - MCL 4.3.1 appeared. MCL 4.3.1 can run as a classic application under MacOS X.
> - MCL 4.4 is in the works. MCL 4.4 will be a "carbonized" version of MCL. > This is actually very cool. I like it. Quite a few MCL users > are waiting for it to be published.
Gary Byers no longer works for Digitool. "In the works," is a euphamism for vaporware. The appearance of 4.3.1 is a positive sign, the only real positive sign among many negative ones. That's why it surprised me.
> My estimation is that at least 20 of the 120 really understand the > advantages of Lisp, and that perhaps 5 or so become real passionate. [...] > We are also mostly the ones in charge of the McCLIM project for > creating a free version of CLIM, which gives students excellent > opportunities to hack Common Lisp and see how it can be used.
The work on Free CLIM/McCLIM is an important "side effect" of Robert's Lisp course. He and his students are doing a good job, and it's really nice to see a steady flow of commit logs :)
Another project by some of Robert's students is the Eclipse/CLWM window manager:
I'd like to make the following proposal. I propose that anyone posting opinions derogatory of Lisp be requred to produce `commentary credits'. The idea is that people who don't have these credits are treated as `clueless' and can be simply ignored rather than creating flame wars. I.e. the opinion
`I think that Lisp is an outdated, obscure language only used by nostalgic academics'
can be adequately refuted in this forum by simply saying,
`What commentary credits do you have? None, I think.'
One can obtain commentary credits by doing something that has benefitted the Lisp community. For example, I think I've earned commentary credits by 1) Presenting a paper on a system using Lisp at the 1999 LUGM; 2) Helping keep Garnet alive, and 3) Fixing a subtle bug in CLX. If I wanted to, then, I might be entitled to make a negative comment about Lisp, such as, for example, ``it was foolish to put the loop macro in the standard,'' though I doubt I'd want to say such a thing at my present level of expertise.
Commentary credits must be claimed but must also in some sense be `approved' by the community. For example, if I used my fixing the bug in CLX as a commentary credit in a piece that claimed to find major drawbacks with CLOS and the MOP, members of the Lisp community might rightly reply that my commentary credit was disallowed.
Commentary credits are only semi-permanent. They can be garbage-collected, and thus disappear, if they seem to have become irrelevant. If one is overused, it can be declared `overloaded' and disallowed on the basis of invalid polymorphism (somewhat like the CLX example above).
A valid commentary credit empowers one to express an opinion on Common Lisp without having one's right to do so challenged. At that point, only discussions of the actual technical merit of the opinion would be acceptable. A critique of the right to offer the opinion, such as
`Only a cretinous moron would think that'
could be adequately refuted by saying
`I believe I provided a commentary credit for my opinion.'
This proposal would have many advantages.
1) It would filter out the trash. Anyone who hasn't done anything in Lisp would be semi-automatically ignored with minimum fuss.
2) Anyone can play. You just have to do something to benefit the Lisp community.
3) It would minimize the wear-and-tear on the heavy artillery (i.e. Erik Naggum). He could be saved for the egregious offenders.
4) It might tend to distract people from arguing about non-Lisp-related things to arguing about the technical merit of some commentary credit.
5) It would remind people, especially newcomers, about things that have been done in Lisp.
6) It would remind the commentators themselves of what they have accomplished in Lisp, perhaps causing them to be more reflective in their comments.
There would be a `grandfather' clause for people who have provided major contributions. Anyone who had a book about Lisp published, for example, would be considered grandfathered forever. Thus if Paul Graham were to post his comments about not liking Common Lisp in this forum, he would be automatically deferred to --- that it, all debate on his comments would be confined to their technical merits, not to his right to hold the opinions he holds.
People like Kent Pitman, who has a basically unbounded supply of commentary credits, would also be grandfathered in.
In the present case, Erin Gatt has commentary credits. He has done several things that have benefitted the Lisp community, including being involved in some fairly spectacular accomplishments. So I think he has sufficient commentary credits to cover his commentary to this point.
-- Fred Gilham gil...@csl.sri.com I was storing data in every conceivable way, including keeping a chain of sound waves running between the speaker and the microphone. There was no more memory left to be had....
