Funny, that, I see a lot of humility and respect for the opinions and
  thoughts of those older and wiser than oneself.  There is virtually no
  arrogance among the cognoscenti.  My experience has been one of great
  patience and willingness to help those who wish to learn.  However, when
  some arrogant little snot of a newbie walks into the forum only to spout his
  own arrogant views without listening to anybody else, the /newbie/ will
  think this is arrogance.  If you are an arrogant newbie, people around you
  will generally return the favor.  If you are interested in learning things
  from those who know, the Lisp communities are better than most.  Well, at
  least comp.lang.lisp.  The comp.lang.scheme people have generally been on
  the defensive even when they are not attacked in any way, which I can only
  interpret as symptoms of a very /protective/ crowd.  However, it has never
  been /arrogance/ that I have found even in the hostility towards comments on
  the severely limited Scheme model.

| Being a very arrogant person at times, I can perhaps recognize the symptom a
| bit better than most.

  Perhaps you do much too well?  Arrogant people tend to trigger arrogant
  responses from others, too.  It is a stupid human tendency that is only
  changed by limiting or removing one's own arrogance.

| I have often made the mistake of thinking I knew more than I really did, but
| I've been working pretty hard on keeping my mind open instead, and it often
| brings results.

  Most of the people I have found in the Common Lisp community have been well
  aware, not only of how much they know, but of where it came from and how
  they arrived at the conclusions they hold, so that they can communicate this
  to others when they need to defend their opinions.  Rapid internalization of
  new knowledge and the ability to integrate it with other information make it
  possible to produce intelligent observations and connections.  All of these
  attributes indicate both "intelligent" and "observant" to me, and not the
  dumb and judgmental attributes that correlate with arrogance.

| I don't know about that.  I'd expect that if the community was truly vibrant
| we'd be seeing things like equivalents to CPAN and such.

  I think this shows your arrogance more than anything else.  You are obviously
  not willing to consider the fact that CPAN and the like depend on much more
  than "vibrant communities" to exist.  In particular, they depend on the
  comparative worthlessness of the time spent on making software for their
  languages.  When the time you spend writing software is both worth paying
  for and it is worth paying others for their time, you get a vibrant /market/,
  not a vibrant library of free software.  You also do not solve problems that
  people are willing to solve for free.

| I've been programming long enough to know that when you're more concerned
| about what the right comment character is than about writing good comments
| you're not on the level of the important any longer.

  Just so we have this clear: You think somebody is arguing over the right
  comment character?  Where did this happen? And moreover, why is this so
  important to you that you think it reflects on the whole community?

| I also know that the nuts and bolts of getting work done is the petty
| problem of expressing algorithms for execution by machine, not the
| discussion of whether the guys who use language-flavor Y are apostates who
| must be banned from the church.

  And just so we have this clear, too: This happened where?  And it was
  important to you why?  Perhaps I do not understand your problems, like I do
  not understand the most recent troll in comp.lang.lisp who whines about the
  syntax.  Trolls are not representative of the community in any way.  You
  should know this, I think.

| Software, unlike theoretical mathematics, is largely about accomplishing
| things.  That leads people to unfortunate mundane concerns like finding a
| module that builds web pages for you or finding a module that interfaces to
| Oracle or finding a module that does statistical analysis for you. When a
| language's devotees no longer discuss such pragmatic matters and instead
| spend all their energy on religion, it implies they are not writing code.

  I would like you to think about and enumerate the many other assumptions
  that went into this rather strange conclusion.  The most important (at least
  to refute your conclusion) assumption is why these things are important to
  you.  You are undoutedly right that these things happen, just as we find the
  most brilliant mind sometimes uttering stupid comments unwittingly, but does
  that prove anything?  I do not in any way wish to deny that these things are
  sometimes discussed and are consuming the time of many people when they do,
  but I wonder why you select these events and similarly ignore the events when
  people discuss application-oriented aspects equally consumingly.  I tend to
  think of the former as supporting the notion that people want to think in
  their languages an therefore need syntax that fits their thinking.  It is only
  to the very shallow that syntax does not matter.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

  Nice quotation.  Sometimes, I think people think ugly because they do not
  want pretty to be an option in the real world.  There is a implicit accusation
  in this quotation that if it is pretty, it cannot be true, and if you believe
  the pretty option, you are naïve.  This attitude is unfortunately very hard
  to combat, since those who believe in such things are amazingly unwilling to
  accept that the world can have pretty parts when their whole life experience
  has been that none of it is.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

But organizing design around non-blocking I/O primitives (from an OS
design standpoint) turns out to be much more complex and error prone
than having straightforward subroutine blocking primitives, and
telling users to use threads if they want multiplexing.

step...@dino.dnsalias.com (Stephen J. Bevan) writes:

By that measure, we're talking about C, C++, Java, Perl, Ruby, Tcl/Tk
(Tcl makes my teeth itch but never mind that), Python, and doubtless a
few others I'm forgetting or unaware of.

I'm not passing any moral judgments here, by the way. Just noting
what has become popular enough that you can go out and at will find
yourself books like "Programming the Perl DBI" or libraries to
generate web log templates or what have you. People might discount the
importance of such things, but they're a pretty big part of the way
modern people put together apps. It is a lot easier to steal someone's
RFC822 parser that they've put up on the net than to write one,
regardless of the language, and when there is a critical mass of such
stuff available it makes a difference in your life.

: Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.no> writes:
:> * Perry E. Metzger
:> | I don't know about that.  I'd expect that if the community was
:> | truly vibrant we'd be seeing things like equivalents to CPAN and such.
:>
:>   I think this shows your arrogance more than anything else.  You
:>   are obviously not willing to consider the fact that CPAN and the
:>   like depend on much more than "vibrant communities" to exist.  In
:>   particular, they depend on the comparative worthlessness of the
:>   time spent on making software for their languages.

It is statements like these that cause me to pick another popular C
library to write an FFI interface for in the scheme implementation
I've chosen.

I'm beginning to believe that the reason scheme isn't as popular as the
rest of the languages isn't so much as there are many implementations, but
more so that no-one understands how to market it worth a damn.

Seen any oreilly books on scheme, or scheme interfaces to SQL or anything like
that? My point exactly.

--
-pete

  And this is an argument for what, precisely?  Like, /whose/ arrogance?

| I think calling anyone an "arrogant little snot" tends to lessen the power
| of one's claim to humility, don't you?

  No, of course not.  I am humble in the face of the field of mathematics, in
  awe of the great number of geniuses before me, greatly inspired by the works
  of many brilliant minds that could both conceive of the most elegant
  concepts and their intricate interrelationships and formulate them so
  cleanly and briefly in books that I could read and grasp their ideas in but
  a minute fraction of the time it took them to develop them, and yet I am
  disgusted to the deepness of my soul by the lack of even the most basic
  arithmetical skills and the rampant innumeracy of many journalists and
  politicians, because those are people who are so unequivocally /not/ humble
  in the face of mathematics, lacking any and all appreciation of the field,
  yet have the gall to abuse simple results in the field in a way that shows
  an utter disrespect for all the great minds that made it possible for them
  to have a chance to grasp mathematical ideas in their compulsory education,
  but discarded that chance and instead spit in the face of every mathematical
  thinker with their every breath.

| Ah, that explains it. Thank you for enlightening me.

  You're welcome.  I note that the intelligent /exchange/ of ideas has ceased.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

The efforts are somewhat less integrated and less coherent than is the
case for Perl (or Python, or Ruby, with their respective communities),
but that isn't _too_ surprising what with there being an actually
diverse set of Common Lisp implementations.  

There is _somewhat_ less demand for CPAN-like stuff for Common Lisp
since the base language has a bit more in it.  

It is _somewhat_ more difficult to construct CPAN-like stuff because
there are a multiplicity of CL implementations.

  No, it is not.  If you had understood the word "comparative", you would not
  have been able to use my statements to support your preconceived notions.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

And the following bit of Guile code does _exactly_ what it would be
expected to do, namely interface with PostgreSQL, and pull a set of
entries.

(use-modules (database postgres))
(define test (pg-connectdb "dbname=sqlledger"))
(define result (pg-exec test "select * from zipcode"))
(let loop ((index 0))
   (if (< index (pg-ntuples result))
       (begin
          (display (pg-getvalue result index 0))
          (display (pg-getvalue result index 1))
          (display (pg-getvalue result index 2))
          (display (pg-getvalue result index 3))
          (display (pg-getvalue result index 4))
          (newline)
          (loop (+ index 1)))))

The PG binding is a little more "primitive" than you'd usually use in
CL, basically eschewing all use of macros, and not really providing
any help with transactions/cursors (both being places where some
well-place macros would be _really_ useful).

:   No, it is not.  If you had understood the word "comparative", you would not
:   have been able to use my statements to support your preconceived notions.

SunOS buzzard > webster comparative
 1 com.par.a.tive adj  \k*m-'par-*t-iv\
      1 : of, relating to, or constituting the degree of comparison in
          a language that denotes increase in the quality, quantity, or
          relation expressed by an adjective or adverb
      2 : considered as if in comparison to something else as a
          standard not quite attained : RELATIVE [~
          stranger]
      3 : studied systematically by comparison of phenomena [~
          literature]
    com.par.a.tive.ly adv
    com.par.a.tive.ness n
 2 comparative n
      1 : one that compares with another esp. on equal footing
          : RIVAL; specif : one that makes witty
          or mocking comparisons
      2 : the comparative degree or form in a language

I'm sorry, but I guess I just don't understand how you wanted to use it in
the context with "worthless".

--
-pete

I promised someone that I was off this thread, but I will answer this
one last message on it.

tb+use...@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:

The annoyance here is people assuming they know "the right thing" and
attempting to impose it, assuming they know more than the person
inquiring about his problem space. Maybe someone for whatever reason
needs to do something you don't particularly like -- work in an object
oriented style or a logic programming style or whatever style you
happen not to agree with this week. You aren't likely to be "right"
when you tell them "no that's stupid", you're just likely to be
expressing taste rather than "The Truth".

The Truth is that there isn't always a The Truth. Just because there
are problems with object systems doesn't mean objects are always
stupid. Just because you don't like someone writing a network protocol
that uses XML instead of sexprs doesn't mean that they don't have to
interface with something someone else built regardless of your
taste. Just because you might think there are no conditions in which
it might be better to do non-compacting garbage collection doesn't
mean someone might not have a condition in which he needs a
non-compacting collector, etc.

At best you can say "my experience is that it would be better for you
to use a hash table for this instead of a PATRICIA tree, but you can
implement the PATRICIA tree using structures this way..." and hell,
maybe it even turns out that the guy knows more about routing than you
do because he's a routing guy and you aren't and PATRICIA trees are
optimal for that problem.

I could have told those people that they were idiots but they weren't
idiots -- they had reasons for wanting to use a technique other than
the one I found ideal and I couldn't really claim to understand their
problem domain as well as they did, so I shut up and worked on giving
them what they needed rather than what I felt The Right Thing was. I
had no idea if my notion of The Right Thing was right anyway. I am not
omniscient, and this is engineering, not mathematics.

In general, the languages and systems that win are the ones with the
least ideological axe to grind. I find that's true with people, too.

Seriously, hanging out on both c.l.l and c.l.s will quickly demonstrate that
the viritol level in the former is much much higher. Whether it is political
or religious is rather irrelevant, c.l.l is simply more intolerant.

:> Seen any oreilly books on scheme, or scheme interfaces to SQL or
:> anything like that? My point exactly.

: O'Reilly also doesn't have books on Common Lisp, and aren't accepting
: new titles on TeX or _any_ form of Lisp, so I'd not count that as
: being of much interest.

Well, I can buy an oreilly book on "mastering regular expressions" but not
"mastering macros". Why? Why doesn't oreilly accept books for lisp-like
lanauges, and why isn't there a book out there like a "macro cookbook"
which talks about the various forms of macro representation and what
you can do with them with good *and relevant* examples by any publisher
at all? The regex book pulled it off and there are a BUNCH of regular
expression styles out there that are incompatible.

: And the following bit of Guile code does _exactly_ what it would be
: expected to do, namely interface with PostgreSQL, and pull a set of
: entries.

I wasn't talking about implementations. I was talking about why I can
wander to a book store and see shelf upon shelf of ASP/JAVA/PERL/C++/SQL
books and then find exactly one grungy SICP book mislocated into the
COBOL section--the only scheme book to be found.

<rant>
You want religion? I'll give you religion:

So, I'm sitting at work and my office mate says he wants to learn scheme
to implement a project that scheme would be a perfect match for. So,
I get to helping him learn it, but he is obviously shy about it. So,
I ask him about it and do you know what he says?

"Scheme and Lisp, in general, are pretentious. It tries to be a magic
bullet which attempts to solve all problems but the solutions it comes
up with (everything is a heterogeneous list, strange typechecking, wierd
development environment, strange/bad error reporting) just get in the
way of doing "real work". Also, they think their way is the "right and
only way" and that just bothers me."

I didn't know how to answer him other than some fast excuse that scheme is
just like any other language, you just have to think a little differently
to use its full potential. To which he scowled at me, as if I had made
true his thoughts about the subject, but continued to learn it because
scheme really WAS the best solution for his problem.  
</rant>

It is this kind of stigma that is the reason scheme isn't popular. I don't
know how to stop it or break it, other than to continue to implement
tools and libraries for a *single* implementation--and make them widely
known, so more people get exposed to it. The more people that get exposed
to something that works, meaning _useful_ and _public_ tools get written in it,
the more people will start to use it and not care about "religion".

As for me? I don't give a rats ass about religion, flamewars, or the
"right way" to do things or any of that shit. I just care if it works,
it is a "reasonable" implementation, and is understandable by the next
person when I leave.

That is all.

--
-pete

That leaves C and C++, neither of which have anything like CPAN.
Instead you can find various libraries in many places, which vary from
working on almost all implementations to those which work only on
specific platforms or even specific compilers (e.g. Linux kernel isn't
going to compile with anything but gcc anytime soon).

So two possible broad categories of vibrant languages :-

  1. Languages in which a single person/company controls the language.
  2. C/C++

or another possible split is :-

  a. "scripting" language with one (or two) implementation(s)
  b. C/C++/Java

None of the following fit into any category: Ada, APL, Common Lisp,
Forth, Haskell, Scheme, SML and Smalltalk.  All have some archives,
but nothing that approaches CPAN.  There are also some languages that
do fit in category 1 such as Clean, Erlang and O'Caml which also don't
have anything that approaches CPAN (though Caml Hump is pretty
impressive).

It does exactly what you ask for explaining Macros.

: It does exactly what you ask for explaining Macros.

Hmm.... nothing is wrong with it, other than I didn't know about it. :)
I usually only code in the scheme domains, not full common lisp.

Does it describe R5RS macros too? Or can the techniques in this book be
readily translated to R5RS macros as well?

--
-pete

  Towards what?  We have more people in comp.lang.lisp who spend all their
  time complaining vociferously about how intolerant the newsgroup is, yet
  they have nothing whatsoever to communicate to anybody.  If you have any
  brilliant ideas for how to make sure that /nobody/ will respond to these
  cretins, please share your insight with you.  If, however, all you wish to
  do is complain, too, consider yourself part of the problem.  Sheesh.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway