What’s gone wrong with Scheme Macros? Why all the debate?
Adrian B.
noticed that there's always so much debate, confusion, and critiques
of the scheme macro system.
Is there something fundamentally broken with Scheme macros? Are they
badly designed? Or is all this discussion simply due to confusion?
Why the constant debate?
If the macro system is badly designed, are there any serious attempts
to improve it? Or is it cast in stone forever more due to appearing
in the R5RS? I've seen one alternative, syntax-case, but is it a
serious alternative for the standard, or is it just a slightly better
version of syntax rules?
Finally, is there a Scehme macros FAQ? I must admit I'm quite
confused by all this debate.
Thanks
Nils Goesche
> Is there something fundamentally broken with Scheme macros?
Yes, they're eugenic. However, I think there is no need to
discuss this in comp.lang.lisp. Follow-ups set.
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID #xD26EF2A0
Adrian B.
> In article <7ed8f64d.02090...@posting.google.com>, bo...@swirve.com (Adrian B.) wrote:
>
> > Is there something fundamentally broken with Scheme macros?
>
And why exactly not? Lispers are strong users of macros and may have
some good experience on the design and use of macro systems. Its not
like the question was crossposted to a C++ or Java newsgroup.
Tim Bradshaw
> And why exactly not?
Years of bitter experience indicate that no good comes of these
discussions. Look at google.
c.l.l seems to be reverting to type alas - we have our first genuine
semi-literate but arrogant halfwit in ages (ilias), and now we are
about to have a c.l.l / c.l.s flame war.
--tim
Kenny Tilton
has many redeeming qualties. He loves Lisp (or at least professes it).
He does not go back-and-forth ad nauseum over a personal dispute. His
articles are mostly technical. Best of all, his articles are short.
As for his refusal to learn, well, that is a self-limiting quality. One
by one all who would offer guidance discover the futility of the effort
and thereafter lurk him for amusement value.
But what is the sound of one Ilias corresponding?
:)
kenny
Marco Antoniotti
bo...@swirve.com (Adrian B.) writes:
> As a casual user of scheme and reader of the related newsgroups, I've
> noticed that there's always so much debate, confusion, and critiques
> of the scheme macro system.
>
> Is there something fundamentally broken with Scheme macros? Are they
> badly designed? Or is all this discussion simply due to confusion?
>
> Why the constant debate?
>
> If the macro system is badly designed, are there any serious attempts
> to improve it? Or is it cast in stone forever more due to appearing
> in the R5RS? I've seen one alternative, syntax-case, but is it a
> serious alternative for the standard, or is it just a slightly better
> version of syntax rules?
There is no real debate. Scheme needs the macro system it has because
it is useful and because of the conflating of "variable" and
"function" namespaces. Not having a macro systme would impair Scheme
usefulness.
Another matter is the pointless debate about the "superiority" of
Scheme "pattern directed" macro system over the "structure handling"
macro system of Common Lisp. Even in this case the chase can be cut
short in many ways. It is simply a non problem.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
715 Broadway 10th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu
"Hello New York! We'll do what we can!"
Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'.
Thien-Thi Nguyen
> But what is the sound of one Ilias corresponding?
people are attached to their own learning model and sometimes can't make light
of others', but all crystalographers know the value of refraction and internal
reflection. like all gems, lisp is amenable to such methods. lisp experts
can drink diamonds and thus sometimes forget its liquid properties are due to
their expertise and practice, which is applicable mostly on a personal basis.
i'm glad ilias did not post a 2-line sed (or other text transform) script!
thi,
just another H for M-x blackbox-usenet...
Software Scavenger
> And why exactly not? Lispers are strong users of macros and may have
> some good experience on the design and use of macro systems. Its not
> like the question was crossposted to a C++ or Java newsgroup.
I agree that it's interesting to discuss differences in macros in
different languages. It seems easy enough for those who aren't
interested to just skip this whole thread. Especially with such an
easily plonkable thread name that won't even cause any hesitation.
As an example to compare Common Lisp macros with Scheme macros,
consider a macro named DO-COMBINATIONS, which works as follows:
(do-combinations (x1 x2 x3) '(1 2 3 4 5)
(print (list x1 x2 x3)))
===>
(1 2 3)
(1 2 4)
(1 2 5)
(1 3 4)
(1 3 5)
(1 4 5)
(2 3 4)
(2 3 5)
(2 4 5)
(3 4 5)
(do-combinations (a b)
'(heart spade diamond club)
(print (list a b)))
===>
(HEART SPADE)
(HEART DIAMOND)
(HEART CLUB)
(SPADE DIAMOND)
(SPADE CLUB)
(DIAMOND CLUB)
(defun combinations-of-3 (list)
(let (result)
(do-combinations (a b c) list
(push (list a b c) result))
(reverse result)))
(combinations-of-3 '(1 2 3 4 5))
===>
((1 2 3) (1 2 4) (1 2 5) (1 3 4) (1 3 5) (1 4 5) (2 3 4) (2 3 5) (2 4
5) (3 4 5))
The above three examples show three ways to use the example
DO-COMBINATIONS macro.
I don't actually know Scheme, but would like to see the implementation
of the above DO-COMBINATIONS macro in it. Then I or someone could
post a CL version of it to compare. Maybe several people could post
more than one way to implement it, to compare different ways in each
language. Then we could do the same thing for other kinds of macros.
Etc., till we get a better idea of the differences.
ilias
can someone please be so kindly to transform this to simple English?
(i'm just assimilating the LISP-reader, and i'm unable to switch
context. but i'd like to know.)
ol...@pobox.com
> As an example to compare Common Lisp macros with Scheme macros,
> consider a macro named DO-COMBINATIONS, which works as follows:
>
> (do-combinations (x1 x2 x3) '(1 2 3 4 5)
> (print (list x1 x2 x3)))
> of the above DO-COMBINATIONS macro in it.
; The do-combinations macro
; (do-combinations (x1 x2 x3) (1 2 3 4 5)
; (print (list x1 x2 x3)))
; will print all combinations of three elements out of (1 2 3 4 5)
(define-syntax do-combinations
(syntax-rules ()
((_ (binder ...) elements body)
(for-each
(lambda (x) (apply (lambda (binder ...) body) x))
(subsets (length (quote (binder ...)))
(quote elements))))))
; create a list of all subsets from 'elements' of length 'how-many'
; The resulting list will have the size of
; (choose how-many (length elements))
; Recurrence relation:
; (subsets how-many (cons el elems)) =
; (append (subsets how-many elems)
; (map add-el (subsets (-- how-many) elems)))
; (subsets 0 elems) = '()
; (subsets 1 elems) = (map list elems) ; singleton subsets
; (subsets n elems) = '() whenever n > (length elems)
;
; The code is optimized for clarity rather than for speed
; See the thread
; http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=7eb8ac3e.0201120056.3fc231c8%40posting.google.com
; for the fastest implementation of this function.
(define (subsets how-many elements)
(cond
((zero? how-many) '())
((null? elements) '())
((= 1 how-many) (map list elements))
((= how-many (length elements)) (list elements))
((> how-many (length elements)) '())
(else
(append (subsets how-many (cdr elements))
(map (lambda (x) (cons (car elements) x))
(subsets (- how-many 1) (cdr elements)))))))
; Test cases
(pp (subsets 0 '(heart spade diamond club)))
(pp (subsets 1 '(heart spade diamond club)))
(pp (subsets 2 '(heart spade diamond club)))
(pp (subsets 3 '(heart spade diamond club)))
(pp (subsets 4 '(heart spade diamond club)))
(pp (subsets 5 '(heart spade diamond club)))
; Examples
(do-combinations (a b)
(heart spade diamond club)
(begin
(display (list a b))
(newline)))
===>
(diamond club)
(spade diamond)
(spade club)
(heart spade)
(heart diamond)
(heart club)
(do-combinations (x1 x2 x3)
(1 2 3 4 5)
(begin
(display (list x1 x2 x3))
(newline)))
===>
(3 4 5)
(2 4 5)
(2 3 4)
(2 3 5)
(1 4 5)
Al Petrofsky
cubic...@mailandnews.com (Software Scavenger) writes:
> bo...@swirve.com (Adrian B.) wrote:
>
> > And why exactly not? Lispers are strong users of macros and may have
> > some good experience on the design and use of macro systems.
> I agree that it's interesting to discuss differences in macros in
> different languages.
There are certainly some readers of comp.lang.lisp who are interested
in comparing scheme and cl macros, but those people should all be
reading comp.lang.scheme as well. Scheme is not a recent offshoot of
lisp. Lisp followers have had plenty of time to consider whether or
not they are interested in the directions scheme has taken, and those
who are interested should look in comp.lang.scheme.
> As an example to compare Common Lisp macros with Scheme macros,
> consider a macro named DO-COMBINATIONS, which works as follows:
> (do-combinations (a b)
> '(heart spade diamond club)
> (print (list a b)))
> ===>
> (HEART SPADE)
> (HEART DIAMOND)
> (HEART CLUB)
> (SPADE DIAMOND)
> (SPADE CLUB)
> (DIAMOND CLUB)
> I don't actually know Scheme, but would like to see the implementation
> of the above DO-COMBINATIONS macro in it.
That example happens to be well-suited to syntax-rules, scheme's
pattern language for macros:
(define-syntax do-combinations
(syntax-rules ()
((do-combinations () list-expr expr)
expr)
((do-combinations (var . rest-of-vars) list-expr expr)
(let do-combos-using-all-vars ((vals list-expr))
(if (not (null? vals))
(let ((var (car vals))
(rest-of-vals (cdr vals)))
(do-combinations rest-of-vars rest-of-vals expr)
(do-combos-using-all-vars rest-of-vals)))))))
An alternative approach would be to keep the macro as simple as
possible and let a procedure do all the work:
(define-syntax do-combinations
(syntax-rules ()
((do-combinations vars list-expr expr)
(do-combos-proc 'vars list-expr (lambda vars expr)))))
(define (do-combos-proc vars vals proc)
(cond ((null? vars) (proc))
((not (null? vals))
(let ((first-val (car vals))
(rest-of-vals (cdr vals)))
(do-combos-proc (cdr vars) rest-of-vals
(lambda args (apply proc first-val args)))
(do-combos-proc vars rest-of-vals proc)))))
-al
Marco Antoniotti
Al Petrofsky <a...@petrofsky.org> writes:
> [Followups redirected to comp.lang.scheme]
>
> cubic...@mailandnews.com (Software Scavenger) writes:
> > bo...@swirve.com (Adrian B.) wrote:
> >
> > > And why exactly not? Lispers are strong users of macros and may have
> > > some good experience on the design and use of macro systems.
>
> > I agree that it's interesting to discuss differences in macros in
> > different languages.
>
> There are certainly some readers of comp.lang.lisp who are interested
> in comparing scheme and cl macros, but those people should all be
> reading comp.lang.scheme as well. Scheme is not a recent offshoot of
> lisp. Lisp followers have had plenty of time to consider whether or
> not they are interested in the directions scheme has taken, and those
> who are interested should look in comp.lang.scheme.
New directions in Scheme? Like "let's re-implement the CLHS"?
Sorry, I am a sucker. I cannot resist these flame baits :)
Fell frce to send replies to /dev/null :)
Kaz Kylheku
Actually it's exactly as if the question was crossposted to a C++
or Java newsgroup.
Christopher Browne
> Feuer <fe...@his.com> writes:
>> > In fact, it is not an offshoot at all. It is a lisp. May I
>> > assume that you are in the "c.l.l is for CL only" brigade?
>>
>> Is it really a Lisp? Does it really retain anything significant from
>> Lisp other than parentheses and call-by-value semantics?
>
> It is hard to see why scheme would not be considered a lisp but emacs
> lisp or interlisp or the lisp in the sawfish window manager or
> whatever would not be. It is certainly not even an unusual dialect --
> lisp 1 also had the unified function/variable namespace, the lexical
> scoping is now the norm rather than unusual, etc. What makes scheme
> the least bit unlispy, in fact?
The fact that such questions lead to flame wars and division, along
quite clearly discernable lines that form on both sides.
There may be things worth discussing about the comparative
similarities and differences between Common Lisp and Scheme; there
might conceivably be some new things worth discussing, even concerning
the respective macro systems.
Unfortunately, past history shows that such discussions generally lead
to flames and acrimony.
The only way that you should _consider_ such a discussion is if you
are:
a) Well aware of the possibilities for flames, and
b) Really quite sure, based on reviewing past discussions, that you
aren't merely rehashing ancient history.
The fact that you aren't aware of the flameworthiness of the
discussion suggests that it is _highly_ unlikely that you have
reviewed past discussions, and that there is little reason to expect
the discussion to lead anywhere constructive.
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "moc.enworbbc@" "enworbbc"))
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/multiplexor.html
Signs of a Klingon Programmer - 2. "Specifications are for the weak
and timid!"
Perry E. Metzger
Christopher Browne <cbbr...@acm.org> writes:
> > It is hard to see why scheme would not be considered a lisp but emacs
> > lisp or interlisp or the lisp in the sawfish window manager or
> > whatever would not be. It is certainly not even an unusual dialect --
> > lisp 1 also had the unified function/variable namespace, the lexical
> > scoping is now the norm rather than unusual, etc. What makes scheme
> > the least bit unlispy, in fact?
>
> The fact that such questions lead to flame wars and division, along
> quite clearly discernable lines that form on both sides.
I find something interesting about both comp.lang.lisp and
comp.lang.scheme. In other language newsgroups, like the the ruby
group or what have you, people spend most of their time asking
questions about how to solve particular problems they're having with
their production code using the language or what have you. This tends
to indicate the people involved are largely interested in programming
languages as a way of accomplishing their work. In the c.l.l and
c.l.s, however, we have groups of people who are concerned largely
about linguistic metaissues, that is, about their language as a
religion.
It would appear that, in their ability to confine themselves almost
entirely at the religious layer of the stack, the two communities are
obviously made up of people of nearly the same mentality. Whether this
is a productive mentality or not remains to be seen, but clearly if we
are to ask a question someone else mentioned today and ask if both
Common Lisp and the Scheme communities share an outlook, there is no
question that they do.
Perhaps to insiders there is a tremendous difference in world view
between the two groups, but to outsiders it looks ever so much like
two groups of Christians a few hundred years ago persecuting each
other over doctrinal minutia utterly unimportant to the overall
picture.
> The fact that you aren't aware of the flameworthiness of the
> discussion suggests that it is _highly_ unlikely that you have
> reviewed past discussions, and that there is little reason to expect
> the discussion to lead anywhere constructive.
Perhaps we could have a new discussion about why it is that people
think that religion is more interesting than writing programs.
--
Perry E. Metzger pe...@piermont.com
--
"Ask not what your country can force other people to do for you..."
Erik Naggum
| Perhaps we could have a new discussion about why it is that people
| think that religion is more interesting than writing programs.
Perhaps people who use Common Lisp and Scheme are already adept at writing
programs and no longer have the pathetic little problems that so plague the
newer languages and are interested in politics (not religion) just as people
who think there is a better way to make a living than wonder how to get a
job serving burgers get into law and politics and diplomacy and standards.
That you have no better grasp of the higher levels of society than to call
it "religion" unfortunately speaks volumes about your own outlook on that
which transcends petty problems expressing simple algorithms in languages
younger than their practitioners' computers.
--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway
Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.
Hrvoje Blazevic
> Perhaps people who use Common Lisp and Scheme are already adept at writing
> programs and no longer have the pathetic little problems that so plague the
> newer languages and are interested in politics (not religion) just as people
> who think there is a better way to make a living than wonder how to get a
> job serving burgers get into law and politics and diplomacy and standards.
Umm... That is an interesting view. I would rather say that people who think
there is a better way to make a living then wonder how to get a job serving
burgers get into LAW and POLITICS and DIPLOMACY ... are people who are not
interested in working at all.
As for politics not being religion ... I was "fortunate" enough to have been
born in a communist run country, and know very well that communism (probably
most of the other "politics" as well) is very much a religion at its best --
cause if you speak up; they will burn you!
Hrvoje
Will Deakin
> Perhaps we could have a new discussion about why it is that people
> think that religion is more interesting than writing programs.
:)w
[1] ...and where do you sit on the call/cc debate?
Pascal Costanza
>
> I find something interesting about both comp.lang.lisp and
> comp.lang.scheme. In other language newsgroups, like the the ruby
> group or what have you, people spend most of their time asking
> questions about how to solve particular problems they're having with
> their production code using the language or what have you. This tends
> to indicate the people involved are largely interested in programming
> languages as a way of accomplishing their work. In the c.l.l and
> c.l.s, however, we have groups of people who are concerned largely
> about linguistic metaissues, that is, about their language as a
> religion.
Your comparisons are not fair, for the following reasons.
(1) Programming languages like Ruby are deliberately restricted to a
particular programming paradigm, in that case object-oriented
programming. If you are willing to restrict yourself to a particular
language you have already made several choices, consciously or
subconsciously, and when you discuss things with your peers you won't
get into these kinds of discusssions because you already agree on some
fundamentals.
Lisp is different in this respect because it has a long history of
experimenting with several programming paradigms. Of course you will get
discussions about language features, sometimes heated discussions, if
that's your topic of interest. No surprises there.
(2) Common Lisp and Scheme reveal different design decisions. This is
most likely because their designers had different goals, sometimes
fundamentally different goals. Sometimes people forget that design
issues are never decided upon in a vacuum, but always with certain
concrete and/or abstract goals in mind. More often than not they are
based on hidden assumptions and discussions get heated because the
participators are not aware of their own respective assumptions.
Now assume you had a newsgroup where people of different object-oriented
programming languages would meet. Soon you would get similar heated
discussions. See http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LanguagePissingMatch for some
examples.
(3) comp.lang.lisp is about several Lisp dialects. Imagine a kind of
comp.lang.commonlisp - I assume that in such a newsgroup the outcome
would be different. What I want to say here is that comp.lang.lisp is
not about _one_ language but about a family of languages. Again, it's
not surprising that you get discussions about the differences between
the several dialects.
These newsgroups just play in a different league.
Pascal
--
Pascal Costanza University of Bonn
mailto:cost...@web.de Institute of Computer Science III
http://www.pascalcostanza.de Römerstr. 164, D-53117 Bonn (Germany)
Kenny Tilton
Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> I find something interesting about both comp.lang.lisp and
> comp.lang.scheme. In other language newsgroups, like the the ruby
> group or what have you, people spend most of their time asking
> questions about how to solve particular problems they're having with
> their production code using the language or what have you. This tends
> to indicate the people involved are largely interested in programming
> languages as a way of accomplishing their work. In the c.l.l and
> c.l.s, however, we have groups of people who are concerned largely
> about linguistic metaissues...
The same faulty conclusion could be drawn from observing the traffic in
comp.instrument.guitar.rock and c.i.g.classical.
:)
kenny
Erik Naggum
| Umm... That is an interesting view. I would rather say that people who think
| there is a better way to make a living then wonder how to get a job serving
| burgers get into LAW and POLITICS and DIPLOMACY ... are people who are not
| interested in working at all.
What was the significance of the "then" that replaced my "than"? Presuming
it has meaning, I am unable to understand what you mean fully. I also
wonder what kind of misguided notions "work" that make up the substance of
your opinion. May I offer a counter-view that muscle-time is irrelevant and
the only measure of the amount of work involved is the brain-time needed.
| As for politics not being religion ... I was "fortunate" enough to have been
| born in a communist run country, and know very well that communism (probably
| most of the other "politics" as well) is very much a religion at its best --
| cause if you speak up; they will burn you!
It is religion that has elements of politics, not the other way around.
Perry E. Metzger
Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> writes:
> * "Perry E. Metzger" <pe...@piermont.com>
> | Perhaps we could have a new discussion about why it is that people
> | think that religion is more interesting than writing programs.
>
> Perhaps people who use Common Lisp and Scheme are already adept at
> writing programs and no longer have the pathetic little problems
> that so plague the newer languages
Perhaps, but I doubt it. I've been writing software in a variety of
languages for... well, I don't want to think about it but I started on
PDP-8s a long time ago. I still learn new things all the time. Hell, I
even learn whole new paradigms.
What I've noticed in a lot of people in this community (and it really
is just one community) is a lot of arrogance. Being a very arrogant
person at times, I can perhaps recognize the symptom a bit better than
most. 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.
> and are interested in politics (not religion) just as people
> who think there is a better way to make a living than wonder how to get a
> job serving burgers get into law and politics and diplomacy and standards.
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. It is
not disgraceful to say "I'm writing an application that needs to
interface with database X, anyone have a binding written already" or
what have you. Perhaps the Lisp community is beyond actually having to
use its language day to day but I doubt that.
> That you have no better grasp of the higher levels of society than to call
> it "religion" unfortunately speaks volumes about your own outlook on that
> which transcends petty problems expressing simple algorithms in languages
> younger than their practitioners' computers.
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. 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.
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.
Hrvoje Blazevic
> What was the significance of the "then" that replaced my "than"? Presuming
> it has meaning, I am unable to understand what you mean fully.
Just a typo!
> I also
> wonder what kind of misguided notions "work" that make up the substance of
> your opinion. May I offer a counter-view that muscle-time is irrelevant and
> the only measure of the amount of work involved is the brain-time needed.
I also wonder what led you to believe that I would value selling burgers more
than the brain-time. Is it because you believe that it is only lawyers,
politicians and diplomats that do use brain-power?
Erik Naggum
| I also wonder what led you to believe that I would value selling burgers
| more than the brain-time. Is it because you believe that it is only lawyers,
| politicians and diplomats that do use brain-power?
No. I consider this "discussion" to have ended some time ago.
Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> 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. 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.
I think the point is that an important goal for Scheme is to do it
right, dammit, or not at all. This would be horrible if Scheme were
the only choice, but it's not. Since there are a jillion decent
programming languages with the attitude "who cares what the comment
character is", what's wrong with there being *one* that wants to get
it right, dammit.
Software Scavenger
in Common Lisp, Scheme, and other languages".
William D Clinger
> Perhaps people who use Common Lisp and Scheme are already adept at writing
> programs and no longer have the pathetic little problems that so plague the
Isn't it pretty to think so?
Ernest Hemingway
Erik Naggum
| What I've noticed in a lot of people in this community (and it really
| is just one community) is a lot of arrogance.
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
| Isn't it pretty to think so?
|
| Ernest Hemingway
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.
sv0f
<pe...@piermont.com> wrote:
>Perhaps, but I doubt it. I've been writing software in a variety of
>languages for... well, I don't want to think about it but I started on
>PDP-8s a long time ago.
Translation: I'm a veteran programmer. You're not.
>What I've noticed in a lot of people in this community (and it really
>is just one community) is a lot of arrogance.
T: To me, an old and wise outsider, you guys are arrogant.
>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.
T: I like Perl.
>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.
T: You'all listen close cuz, once again, I've been programming
a long time.
Perry E. Metzger
Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> writes:
> * Perry E. Metzger
> | What I've noticed in a lot of people in this community (and it really
> | is just one community) is a lot of arrogance.
>
> 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.
When I asked one of the high cognoscs about the absence of an i/o
multiplexing primitive in his dialect because I needed one for doing
some event driven programming, I was regaled with why event driven
programming is stupid and ugly and I should be using threads
instead. I've had a dozen such experiences of late.
> 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.
I think calling anyone an "arrogant little snot" tends to lessen the
power of one's claim to humility, don't you?
> | 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.
Ah, that explains it. Thank you for enlightening me.
Stephen J. Bevan
> vibrant we'd be seeing things like equivalents to CPAN and such.
By this measure, which languages are truly vibrant? I'm particularly
interested in any that have multiple (say >= 3) implementations.
Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> When I asked one of the high cognoscs about the absence of an i/o
> multiplexing primitive in his dialect because I needed one for doing
> some event driven programming, I was regaled with why event driven
> programming is stupid and ugly and I should be using threads
> instead. I've had a dozen such experiences of late.
I think the cognoscs are right here. Threads and multiplexing
primitives are duals of each other anyway, so if you are given
threads, you can easily create the multiplexing primitive you want.
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.
So that's why you get told that: it's actually the right thing. If
the best way to represent your computation is with a non-blocking or a
multiplexing interface, then it's very easy to implement that using
the threads you've been given.
Perry E. Metzger
ste...@dino.dnsalias.com (Stephen J. Bevan) writes:
> "Perry E. Metzger" <pe...@piermont.com> writes:
> > 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.
>
> By this measure, which languages are truly vibrant?
Vibrant might be the wrong term. Lets just say "being so actively used
by large communities that lots of tools and libraries are available on
the net".
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.
Peter Keller
: Erik Naggum <er...@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
E-mail address corrupted to stop spam.
Reply mail: psilord at cs dot wisc dot edu
I am responsible for what I say, noone else.
Erik Naggum
| When I asked one of the high cognoscs about the absence of an i/o
| multiplexing primitive in his dialect because I needed one for doing some
| event driven programming, I was regaled with why event driven programming is
| stupid and ugly and I should be using threads instead. I've had a dozen
| such experiences of late.
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.
Christopher Browne
> 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. It is
> not disgraceful to say "I'm writing an application that needs to
> interface with database X, anyone have a binding written already" or
> what have you. Perhaps the Lisp community is beyond actually having to
> use its language day to day but I doubt that.
I think we _are_ seeing something like CPAN in the form of CCLAN.
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.
On the Scheme side of the fence, it's _much_ more difficult to see
common code get deployed for a multiplicity of Scheme implementations
because the base language is so much smaller. The SRFI process is
nonetheless supplying at least _some_ of this. And we periodically
hear more about things designed for scsh getting ported more widely
:-).
--
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" "@ntlug.org")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lisp.html
"High-level languages are a pretty good indicator that all else is
seldom equal." - Tim Bradshaw, comp.lang.lisp
Erik Naggum
| 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.
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.
Kenny Tilton
Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 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 ...
Then let's not leave COBOL and Pascal off the "vibrant" list. Remember
those popular languages?
kenny
Christopher Browne
> 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.
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.
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).
But it exists, and it works, and I just used it to blow up an Emacs
buffer by showing 80,000-odd zipcodes.
--
(concatenate 'string "aa454" "@freenet.carleton.ca")
http://cbbrowne.com/info/oses.html
Coming Soon to a Mainframe Near You! MICROS~1 Windows NT 6.0,
complete with VISUAL JCL...
Perry E. Metzger
Kenny Tilton <kti...@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> > 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 ...
>
> Then let's not leave COBOL and Pascal off the "vibrant" list.
I'm afraid I must. I can't find large COBOL libraries anywhere on the
net, and there isn't any place to find large Pascal libraries,
either. The same can't be said about C or Python.
Peter Keller
: * Peter Keller <psi...@data.upl.cs.wisc.edu>
: | 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.
: 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".
Perry E. Metzger
I promised someone that I was off this thread, but I will answer this
one last message on it.
tb+u...@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> "Perry E. Metzger" <pe...@piermont.com> writes:
> > When I asked one of the high cognoscs about the absence of an i/o
> > multiplexing primitive in his dialect because I needed one for doing
> > some event driven programming, I was regaled with why event driven
> > programming is stupid and ugly and I should be using threads
> > instead. I've had a dozen such experiences of late.
>
> I think the cognoscs are right here. Threads and multiplexing
> primitives are duals of each other anyway,
Actually, they aren't in practice -- there's a huge performance
difference. I could go into a long argument on why it is that event
driven programs are actually quite straightforward to write (they are
no more alien than functional programming is -- it is just a different
style), why they are much easier to write than thread driven programs
for certain applications (among other things, you end up with much
more elegant designs), and why in general the performance on real
hardware of event driven code is going to always be better than that
of thread driven code. I think this is all a digression though. We
aren't talking about threads vs. events. We're talking about an
attitude in the community.
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.
> So that's why you get told that: it's actually the right thing.
I find in general that The Right Thing is hard to impose. I was
running a NetBSD related company for a couple of years. I found that
people want threads for some apps, and even though I didn't like
threads, I paid someone to work on a better performing threads
mechanism because some people find they're more convenient some of the
time than the techniques I prefer.
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.
Ray Blaak
> The Truth is that there isn't always a The Truth.
Amen brother!
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.
--
Cheers, The Rhythm is around me,
The Rhythm has control.
Ray Blaak The Rhythm is inside me,
bl...@telus.net The Rhythm has my soul.
Peter Keller
: In the last exciting episode, Peter Keller <psi...@data.upl.cs.wisc.edu> wrote::
:> 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.
: 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.
Stephen J. Bevan
> Vibrant might be the wrong term. Lets just say "being so actively used
> by large communities that lots of tools and libraries are available on
> the net".
>
> 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.
Of these only C, C++ and Java pass my arbitrary "more than 3
implementations" requirement. Even there Java stands out from the
other two in that while there are multiple implementations, Sun pretty
much dictates the direction of Java in the same way that the authors
of the single implementation languages do.
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).
The point being that compared to C/C++/Java and a handful of scripting
languages it seems that no languages are vibrant.
Friedrich Dominicus
> In comp.lang.scheme Christopher Browne <cbbr...@acm.org> wrote:
> : In the last exciting episode, Peter Keller <psi...@data.upl.cs.wisc.edu> wrote::
> :> 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.
>
> : 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?
what's wrong with OnLisp?
http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html
It does exactly what you ask for explaining Macros.
Regards
Friedrich
Stephen J. Bevan
> primitives are duals of each other anyway, so if you are given
> threads, you can easily create the multiplexing primitive you want.
In theory. In practice I can't get a small Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD,
OpenBSD ... etc. box to run very well with 10,000 threads (one per
connection) but I can get it to run quite well with 10,000 connections
all being served by a single /dev/poll, kqueue or poll (ugh). If
someone can make 10,000 threads run well on these platforms I'll give
up event driven approach in a flash. I'm not holding my breath
though.
Peter Keller
: what's wrong with OnLisp?
: http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html
: 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?
Erik Naggum
| 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.
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.
Thien-Thi Nguyen
> 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.
sounds like you should switch to computer engineering. the life of a computer
scientist is full of all of the above (one would gather from observing these
groups). on second thought, engineering is the same... never mind, you're
screwed. (might as well lose your mind now and get it over with. ;-)
what you'll probably come to see and possibly come to appreciate is that to
find the "reasonable" one has to do all sorts of unreasonable things/thinking.
unless, of course, you have the luxury of being a machine to be programmed by
these pesky humans... then you can rightly blame them for the mess!
ok, time to step up the medication...
thi
MJ Ray
> [...] Why doesn't oreilly accept books for lisp-like lanauges [...]?
The cynic would say that the amount of money that O'Reilly have sunk into
less powerful languages means that they are maximising the return now. If
they educated people effectively about the more powerful languages, their
back catalogue sales would go through the floor, wouldn't they?
Tim Bradshaw
> When I asked one of the high cognoscs about the absence of an i/o
> multiplexing primitive in his dialect because I needed one for doing
> some event driven programming, I was regaled with why event driven
> programming is stupid and ugly and I should be using threads
> instead. I've had a dozen such experiences of late.
Isn't this exactly the attitude that Java has (or had, has it changed
now?)
--tim
Erik Naggum
| The cynic would say that the amount of money that O'Reilly have sunk into
| less powerful languages means that they are maximising the return now. If
| they educated people effectively about the more powerful languages, their
| back catalogue sales would go through the floor, wouldn't they?
Before the opinionated speculation takes over completely, go look at this:
http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/writeforus_1101.html
and notice where the word LISP occurs. Become enlightened.
![Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor]'s profile photo](http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a-/ALV-UjW1Ug-7D5rvPAe0Dy8QWlBwdoMp8sHWFACGdNTzwJ9mF7CkTQ=s40-c)
Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor]
Perry> Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> writes:
>> * Perry E. Metzger
>> | What I've noticed in a lot of people in this community (and it really
>> | is just one community) is a lot of arrogance.
>>
>> 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.
Perry> When I asked one of the high cognoscs about the absence of an i/o
Perry> multiplexing primitive in his dialect because I needed one for doing
Perry> some event driven programming, I was regaled with why event driven
Perry> programming is stupid and ugly and I should be using threads
Perry> instead. I've had a dozen such experiences of late.
That would be me (on comp.lang.scheme.scsh), and, until now, I thought
we were having a fruitful exchange on that matter. I guess I was
mistaken, and I apologize if was "regaling" you in any way. It
certainly didn't feel that way to me.
You did forget to mention that the same "high cognosc" (I guess that's
a compliment) promised to implement said multiplexing primitive
exactly to accomodate people like you. In fact, I've actually done
the work by now.
--
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla
Sander Vesik
> In comp.lang.scheme Christopher Browne <cbbr...@acm.org> wrote:
> : In the last exciting episode, Peter Keller <psi...@data.upl.cs.wisc.edu> wrote::
> :> 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.
>
> : 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.
O'Reilly is a for-profit comapny last I checked so whetever or not they
will acceptys omething will very probably depend on whetever they see a
market for it. If I was them, I would not accept a scheme or lisp book
either.
>
> : 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.
>
Because the number of at large scheme developers strating new projects
or releasing new versions of existing ones is terribly slow if you are
interested in the 'per day' amounts. Which also means per-day number
of peopel thinking of participating in such (or starting their own) is
also terribly slow => no books.
>
> That is all.
>
--
Sander
+++ Out of cheese error +++
Friedrich Dominicus
> In comp.lang.scheme Friedrich Dominicus <fr...@q-software-solutions.com> wrote:
> : what's wrong with OnLisp?
> : http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html
>
> : 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?
No.
> Or can the techniques in this book be
> readily translated to R5RS macros as well?
I don't think so, probably just partly. AFAIK do Schemes offer usually
more than one macro system there are the R5RS Macros but there are
macro systems that work simular to Common Lisps defmacro. But that's
probably a questoin for c.l.scheme
Regards
Friedrich
Friedrich Dominicus
> * MJ Ray <markj...@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
> | The cynic would say that the amount of money that O'Reilly have sunk into
> | less powerful languages means that they are maximising the return now. If
> | they educated people effectively about the more powerful languages, their
> | back catalogue sales would go through the floor, wouldn't they?
>
> Before the opinionated speculation takes over completely, go look at this:
>
> http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/writeforus_1101.html
>
> and notice where the word LISP occurs. Become enlightened.
This is ridicolous. I can't see any reason for seeing it there. And
fair enough the have books about TeX but refuse some about LaTeX. This
is so idiotic.
Friedrich
Marco Antoniotti
ste...@dino.dnsalias.com (Stephen J. Bevan) writes:
> "Perry E. Metzger" <pe...@piermont.com> writes:
> > 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.
>
> By this measure, which languages are truly vibrant? I'm particularly
> interested in any that have multiple (say >= 3) implementations.
You realize that you are essentially disqualifying things like Python
and Perl, don't you?
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
715 Broadway 10th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu
"Hello New York! We'll do what we can!"
Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'.
Bruce Lewis
> What I've noticed in a lot of people in this community (and it really
> is just one community) is a lot of arrogance.
Yes, this is an acknowledged problem. There's a popular Jesse Bowman
quote, "The problem with Lisp is it makes you so damn smug."
Perhaps you can help. If there are these other newsgroups where people
are constantly posting with real-world problems that would be hard to
solve in CL or Scheme, it shouldn't be too much trouble to post one or
two such problems here. Then we would all see how isolated our little
academic exercises are from the real world.
> 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.
If you're a language implementor you're talking about something
important. Most newsgroups don't include discussions among different
implementors of the same language.
> 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.
It may imply they aren't getting a lot of new blood. I'm still writing
code, but I already have a module that builds web pages for me and an
interface to my databases.
--
<brlewis@[(if (brl-related? message) ; Bruce R. Lewis
"users.sourceforge.net" ; http://brl.codesimply.net/
"alum.mit.edu")]>
Marco Antoniotti
Peter Keller <psi...@data.upl.cs.wisc.edu> writes:
...
>
> 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.
When the spec is small, whipping up another implementation is (too)
easy.
> Seen any oreilly books on scheme, or scheme interfaces to SQL or anything like
> that? My point exactly.
You have not seen a book on Common Lisp (or Scheme) in the O'Reilly
lineup because the have a ban on "Lisp" and "LaTeX".
http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/writeforus_1101.html
Daniel Barlow
> more elegant designs), and why in general the performance on real
> hardware of event driven code is going to always be better than that
For a minute there I thought we were into a potentially interesting
discussion of the different technical approaches to serving multiple
clients
> of thread driven code. I think this is all a digression though. We
> aren't talking about threads vs. events. We're talking about an
> attitude in the community.
But no, you have to drag the conversation back to _religion_. Thank
you for your contribution to the c.l.l signal-to-noise ratio.
-dan
--
http://ww.telent.net/cliki/ - Link farm for free CL-on-Unix resources
Fred Gilham
Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> writes:
> Before the opinionated speculation takes over completely, go look at this:
>
> http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/writeforus_1101.html
>
> and notice where the word LISP occurs. Become enlightened.
Well, we can at least be thankful that they didn't put LISP
*immediately* above "pet theories of wombat intercourse".
Though they did put it above "books on topics that have dismal
sales...."
--
Fred Gilham gil...@csl.sri.com || His word is a creative word, and
when he speaks the good exists as good. God is neither arbitrary nor
tyrannical. He is love, and when he expresses his will it is a will
of love. Hence the good given by God is good for us.-- Jacques Ellul
Peter Keller
: Peter Keller <psi...@data.upl.cs.wisc.edu> writes:
: You have not seen a book on Common Lisp (or Scheme) in the O'Reilly
: lineup because the have a ban on "Lisp" and "LaTeX".
: http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/writeforus_1101.html
Huh. I didn't know that....
Christopher Browne
> In comp.lang.scheme Christopher Browne <cbbr...@acm.org> wrote:
> : In the last exciting episode, Peter Keller <psi...@data.upl.cs.wisc.edu> wrote::
> :> 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.
>
> : 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.
I do not know. I _do_ know that they specifically disqualify books on
Lisp and LaTeX.
<http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/writeforus_1101.html>
I'm quite sure that irrespective of any disputing that might take
place around here about whether Scheme is or is not "a Lisp," it is
doubtless enough _like_ Lisp to qualify as such for _their_ purposes.
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "moc.enworbbc@" "enworbbc"))
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lisp.html
((lambda (foo) (bar foo)) (baz))
Christopher Browne
They haven't accepted books on TeX in some years now. I don't think
they discriminate against TeX in this any more than they discriminate
against Common Lisp (since "presumably" Scheme, not being named
"LISP," is fair game for books, right? NOT!).
There are past books in these various areas, but none of it is even
_faintly_ recent. The Elisp book dates back to 1997. The TeX book
dates back to 1994.
The notion that they would have changed policies to reject _further_
submissions on these subjects may be "discriminatory," but I'd not
judge it to be either "ridicolous" or "so idiotic."
(Of course, the author of the book on TeX wrote another book,
published by O'Reilly, that has a section on Scheme, or DSSSL, to be
more precise... But it isn't a book "on LISP," to be sure, so there's
no particular contradiction with policy in this...)
--
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" "@acm.org")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/x.html
Oh, boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a really *big*
RAMdisk!
Kenny Tilton
Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> Kenny Tilton <kti...@nyc.rr.com> writes:
>
>>Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>>
>>>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 ...
>>
>>Then let's not leave COBOL and Pascal off the "vibrant" list.
>
>
> I'm afraid I must. I can't find large COBOL libraries ...
Well, (a) I said "books", but (b) my larger point was that popularity
comes and goes.
As for your arrogance worries, someone comes along every few months to
complain about that. It's not arrogance, it is confidence. It just seems
like arrogance to anyone who does not appreciate how excellent is Lisp.
kenny
Friedrich Dominicus
>
> The notion that they would have changed policies to reject _further_
> submissions on these subjects may be "discriminatory," but I'd not
> judge it to be either "ridicolous" or "so idiotic."
Well excluding an area in which you usually earn your money (books
about programming and too programming languages or tools) is IMHO
idiotic. What will happen if all people will start asking for Lisp or
LaTeX books will they add an
- no Java books than?
A reason I can follow is just a very small market. But I'm not sure if
the market is really so small. Well you pointed out other things they
have too books about Emacs and Emacs Lisp which obviously are
Lisps, wo what is their we are not looking after stuff good for?
Friedrich
Perry E. Metzger
The business person would note that since very few people use lisp
they don't want to spend money on something perceived as a niche
market. Books on languages such as Ruby, Perl, Python, etc. all sell
well because lots of people use those languages for their everyday work.
Perry
Marco Antoniotti
Peter Keller <psi...@data.upl.cs.wisc.edu> writes:
> In comp.lang.scheme Marco Antoniotti <mar...@cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>
> : Peter Keller <psi...@data.upl.cs.wisc.edu> writes:
>
> : You have not seen a book on Common Lisp (or Scheme) in the O'Reilly
> : lineup because the have a ban on "Lisp" and "LaTeX".
>
> : http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/writeforus_1101.html
>
> Huh. I didn't know that....
Neither did I. I was very surprised to see that. Somebody at
O'Reilly must really hate us. :) (And Leslie Lamport as well :) )
Ray Blaak
> * Ray Blaak <bl...@telus.net>
> | 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.
>
> 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.
Towards morons, differing points of view, Lisp 1, schemers, perl hackers,
copyleft, whatever.
I wasn't in fact complaining, only observing. Think about it: this thread is
*about* the tolerance levels of the newsgroups. The resulting discussion is
bound to have viewpoints of varying positions. It is disingenuous to simply
consider as invalid any position that is pointing out the problem.
The fix is not necessarily to make sure nobody responds to the cretins. All
that is required is for people to lighten up, bigtime. That is, don't get
angry, upset, annoyed, etc., so easily.
There are gentler ways with dealing with the clueless that are simply more
effective, namely, pointing out the error of their ways *without* invective
convulsions, and then if they don't get it, simply ignoring them or the entire
thread.
You yourself have improved dramatically in the last number of months, making
an obviously concerted effort to reign things in. I honestly congratulate you.
--
Cheers, The Rhythm is around me,
The Rhythm has control.
Ray Blaak The Rhythm is inside me,
bl...@telus.net The Rhythm has my soul.
Stephen J. Bevan
> ste...@dino.dnsalias.com (Stephen J. Bevan) writes:
> > "Perry E. Metzger" <pe...@piermont.com> writes:
> > > 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.
> >
> > By this measure, which languages are truly vibrant? I'm particularly
> > interested in any that have multiple (say >= 3) implementations.
>
> You realize that you are essentially disqualifying things like Python
> and Perl, don't you?
Yes, the >=3 is in there deliberately to try and expose any
languages which are vibrant and which also have multiple
implementations. My theory being that there aren't any.
Marco Antoniotti
Friedrich Dominicus <fr...@q-software-solutions.com> writes:
I am inclined to accept the "irrationality" hypothesis about the
O'Reilly ban on LISP and LaTeX.
If the market for these books is (and - admittedly - is smaller than
that of "The Idiotitic Guide to SLDJ") then you can just prioritize
them low on the editorial pipeline and devote small resources to them.
But the ban is comprehensive and absolute. There is no leeway for
market adaptability in there. Hence I - personally - conclude that it
is an "irrational" choice. The fact that it does not harm O'Reilly
financially simply makes the overall management indifferent to such
"irrationality".
Takehiko Abe
Marco Antoniotti wrote:
> Neither did I. I was very surprised to see that. Somebody at
> O'Reilly must really hate us. :) (And Leslie Lamport as well :) )
>
Love/Hate is mutual. Does Lisp community love O'Reilly?
I doubt that.
**
I hate O'Reilly books. It is puzzling that those who demand all
software to be free and chant 'Proprietary!' in every occasion
are so willing to pay for O'Reilly's books.
--
This message was not sent to you unsolicited.
Erik Naggum
| I wasn't in fact complaining, only observing.
Oh, come on! You selectively "observe" and provide a complaint as a result
because you rate your selective observations. If you were truly /observing/,
you would not feel such an enormous need to post a conclusion.
| Think about it: this thread is *about* the tolerance levels of the
| newsgroups.
I have in fact observed that the vast majority of the idiotic fights in
comp.lang.lisp are caused by some idiot who "observes" how hostile the
newsgroup is -- to people who come to it to complain and do not even have
the mental wherewithall to realize that they cannot both observe and comment
negatively at the same time. The two are mutually exclusive. If you post
your stupid observation, you elevate the things you have selected to some
mystical importance where all the other observations that you probably did
not even notice, vanish in the noise. The fact is, /you/ highlight negative
experiences and fit into the long line of people who have nothing to offer
to this forum except your idiotic conclusions, /not/ observations, about the
forum. If we could find a way to get rid of these moronic meta-debates that
people like you start and falsely accuse people of things you have not even
bothered to pay attention to, your kind would not have much anything to
complain about, either.
| It is disingenuous to simply consider as invalid any position that is
| pointing out the problem.
But /why/ did you feel like posting your negative comment to begin with?
| The fix is not necessarily to make sure nobody responds to the cretins. All
| that is required is for people to lighten up, bigtime. That is, don't get
| angry, upset, annoyed, etc., so easily.
So do your part and don't piss people off with your selective "observations".
| There are gentler ways with dealing with the clueless that are simply more
| effective, namely, pointing out the error of their ways *without* invective
| convulsions, and then if they don't get it, simply ignoring them or the
| entire thread.
Yeah, and I see your name trying to do this all the time, right? You would
not even understand what you do until you have posted several thousand
helpful messages to morons who want you to do their homework, to hold their
hands, to answer their next question and the next because they are to fucking
stupid to be able to figure out anything on their own. Do this for a while
and tell me that you follow your own advice.
| You yourself have improved dramatically in the last number of months, making
| an obviously concerted effort to reign things in. I honestly congratulate you.
Fuck you. So why did you have to complain? Goddamn whining negativists.
Ray Blaak
> Perry> When I asked one of the high cognoscs about the absence of an i/o
> Perry> multiplexing primitive in his dialect because I needed one for doing
> Perry> some event driven programming, I was regaled with why event driven
> Perry> programming is stupid and ugly and I should be using threads
> Perry> instead. I've had a dozen such experiences of late.
>
> That would be me (on comp.lang.scheme.scsh), and, until now, I thought
> we were having a fruitful exchange on that matter. I guess I was
> mistaken, and I apologize if was "regaling" you in any way. It
> certainly didn't feel that way to me.
A perfect example of the effective gentle strategy in action: a conflict or
misunderstanding is observed, followed by a response that clarifies or
otherwise smoothes things over.
Of course, the entertainment value is much reduced, but one can't have
everything.
Peter Keller
: Yeah, and I see your name trying to do this all the time, right? You would
: not even understand what you do until you have posted several thousand
: helpful messages to morons who want you to do their homework, to hold their
: hands, to answer their next question and the next because they are to fucking
: stupid to be able to figure out anything on their own. Do this for a while
: and tell me that you follow your own advice.
You, sir, need to walk away from computers, programming, and people
and get a different job in a different field where you don't even use
computers or talk to people because whatever computer/programming related
thing you are doing now is appearing to make you terribly unhappy.
Stephen J. Bevan
It changed in Java 1.4 with the introduction of the nio package.
However, it was added in such a way that it doesn't seamlessly fit
with the other socket abstractions i.e. if you want to run SSL over a
non-blocking socket in Java you are going to have to do a lot of work.
Duane Rettig
> O'Reilly is a for-profit comapny last I checked so whetever or not they
> will acceptys omething will very probably depend on whetever they see a
> market for it. If I was them, I would not accept a scheme or lisp book
> either.
This is true for all for-profit companies, even Lisp companies. At
various times, we've also considered publishing hard-bound books
and rejected the idea, because the loss-leader was more expensive
than if we were to put our marketing budget into something with more
return-on-investment.
But let's back up a bit. This portion of this thread has exploded
because many people have taken one person's definition of "vibrancy"
in a language as fact. What we really should be doing is examining
the _reason_ why Lisp books are not profitable. I see it in
precisely the opposite way; the proliferation of books on a language
are a sign of that languuage's weakness, not its strength.
Besides profit (or, at least, minimizing loss) there are other reasons
why potential publishers will put out a book. If it fills a hole
in the subject area, it might be worth putting the book out anyway.
But usually, only persons or companies that are interested in the
subject material will be the ones to do this, and only if the holes
are perceived as large enough.
This is a classic case of "worse is better". The languages with
the largest holes get the most proliferation of books (and libraries,
for that matter). Do I think that Lisp is perfect? Not at all.
Do I think Lisp can use more books in its repertoire? Absolutely.
But I do think that the original poster, charging in and talking
about vibrancy and arrogance, arrogantly got it backward.
--
Duane Rettig du...@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Kenny Tilton
Marco Antoniotti wrote:
> Somebody at
> O'Reilly must really hate us. :)
The good news: we have a metric to tell us when Lisp will have returned
from exile to reclaim its rightful place: "Did we say 'no Lisp'?"
Now who will volunteer to check that web page every day?
kenny
Eduardo Muñoz
> In comp.lang.scheme Christopher Browne <cbbr...@acm.org> wrote:
> : In the last exciting episode, Peter Keller <psi...@data.upl.cs.wisc.edu> wrote::
> :> 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.
>
> : 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.
IMHO the "problem" for O'Reilly is that TeX and
Lisp are stable technologies while Perl, Java,
regexps and the like are everchanging things that
allow then to sell almost the same book every year
or two.
This is the holy grail of IT now. A constant
stream of revenue based on selling little more
than smoke and mirrors.
--
Eduardo Muñoz
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> There are past books in these various areas, but none of it is even
> _faintly_ recent. The Elisp book dates back to 1997. The TeX book
> dates back to 1994.
I dunno--'97 is fairly recent. '94 is pushing things a bit though.
It's pretty sad that the market won't bear books on either Lisp or
LaTeX to their satisfaction.
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
But it's more than that, of course; bad spelling just isn't respectable.
You may, perhaps, want to lament this fact. You are free to do so. The
fact remains. --John Mitchell
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
> they don't want to spend money on something perceived as a niche
> market. Books on languages such as Ruby, Perl, Python, etc. all
> sell well because lots of people use those languages for their
> everyday work.
People use Ruby? Last I looked at it, I wasn't very impressed...
If anything, I wonder if the presence of an O'Reilly book doesn't
_create_ a market to some extent. If there were an O'Reilly book on
Lisps and another on LaTeX, maybe intelligent languages and
intelligent document preparation might make a comeback:-)
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
Freedom does not mean freedom just for the things I think I should be
able to do. Freedom is for all of us. If people will not speak up
for other people's rights, there will come a day when they will lose
their own. --Tony Lawrence
Erik Naggum
| Love/Hate is mutual. Does Lisp community love O'Reilly? I doubt that.
The sad thing about love and hate is that they are both normally unrequited.
Some have argued that all real love is inrequited. What makes this so sad,
is that those who hate somebody else who don't give a flying fsck about them
is that they make a lot of noise just to be heard and seen as human beings.
Invisibility in the eyes of somebody you love or hate can be really painful
and the reason people do so many stupid things when these emotions place
themselves between their intellect and their actions is precisely that they
crave attention, much like a lonely cat.
| I hate O'Reilly books. It is puzzling that those who demand all software to
| be free and chant 'Proprietary!' in every occasion are so willing to pay for
| O'Reilly's books.
It seems to be a political decision on your part. I like their books because
they usually manage to find authors who are way smarter than the average
crop many other publishers seem to attract. Their Nutshell Handbooks are
quite frequently /the/ essential reference. For the areas where I have no
desire to become an expert, I have also found their offerings very good.
There is no doubt that O'Reilly have profited on the Open Source movement.
I can hardly fault them for that -- I have some 40 volumes from them to date
and they have even sent me a couple books free of charge, so I can only say
that I am quite satisfied with them.
Erik Naggum
| You, sir, need to walk away from computers, programming, and people and get
| a different job in a different field where you don't even use computers or
| talk to people because whatever computer/programming related thing you are
| doing now is appearing to make you terribly unhappy.
Let me know how it worked for you. Take a week, nay, /four/ weeks off, and
get back to us with a report on your mental state. Until then, shut your hot
air vent, you disgustingly rude little runt. You speak about yourself and
your inability to cope with rejection because you realize that you /should/
be rejected for the insipid non-contributions you serve us. Quit annoying
people with your vacuous "observations" and your idiotic "advice". OK?
Thomas F. Burdick
> Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> writes:
> > * Perry E. Metzger
> > | What I've noticed in a lot of people in this community (and it really
> > | is just one community) is a lot of arrogance.
> >
> > 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.
>
> When I asked one of the high cognoscs about the absence of an i/o
> multiplexing primitive in his dialect because I needed one for doing
> some event driven programming, I was regaled with why event driven
> programming is stupid and ugly and I should be using threads
> instead. I've had a dozen such experiences of late.
I take it you're talking about a Scheme dialect, right? I would
assume that Erik was talking about the (Common)Lisp cognoscenti, so
that's not particularly relevant. I have a hard time imagining you'd
get a religious response like this from a Lisp cognoscento, if just
for the fact that this is a programming paradigm question, and someone
who thinks that there is One Correct God-Given Way To Write Code
probably wouldn't be using a mixed-paradigm language like CL in the
first place.
--
/|_ .-----------------------.
,' .\ / | No to Imperialist war |
,--' _,' | Wage class war! |
/ / `-----------------------'
( -. |
| ) |
(`-. '--.)
`. )----'
Christopher Browne
Think about TeX, for a moment. (That's something you'll not likely
feel emotional about.)
Q: Who's the publisher of the "comprehensive/authoritative" works on TeX?
A: The vast majority of the interesting TeX/LaTeX-related books are
published by Addison-Wesley. That includes the authorities, Knuth and
Lamport, and there's a whole series of other authors that have
produced various "Companion" books.
O'Reilly can't readily compete with that, as they haven't nearly as
authoritative authors.
With Perl, they've got the "top guys" in their stable, and the same is
pretty much true for Python and PHP. With those language, they _can_
be a "dominant alpha male" in the wolfpack of publishers. But ramping
up to have even second-string authors about TeX would be a real
challenge.
Looking at TeX, it doesn't make sense for O'Reilly to put in effort to
try to be "dominant," because it would be _VERY_ difficult to unseat
A-W. The best they can do is to have second- or third-string books,
so they have evidently decided not to even play in the TeX "market."
And much the same holds true for Lisp. O'Reilly isn't in a position
to "challenge for leadership," so it's not _too_ remarkable for them
to choose to stay out of the game.
With respect to Java, O'Reilly _does_ have a pretty strong stable of
authors, albeit not including the Goslings of the sector. They may
not have Gosling, but they have a goodly, credible set of authors, and
a strong set of books on a sizable set of Java-related topics.
For Lisp, they haven't any Larry Wall-like authority, and they
apparently figure they haven't a market for a series of Lisp titles
where they could make use of less luminary authors.
Note that in all of this, I haven't once mentioned a single
"technical" issue surrounding the fitness of Lisp.
They may have some issues on that side of things, but I'd think it far
_more_ significant that the editorial staff has members like Larry
Wall that don't have a vastly high regard for Lisp as far as its
present "usefulness."
There's quite enough "politics," between the "author mix" and the
"editorial preferences" mix, to make it quite pointless to pitch a
Lisp book at O'Reilly.
Evidently O'Reilly isn't part of the "Lisp Political Party,"
irrespective of whether it is sufficiently inclusive to include Scheme
or Dylan. And you'll just have to live with that.
--
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" "@acm.org")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/
"And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug
reports on it, you know they are just evil lies." -- Linus Torvalds
Thomas F. Burdick
> Looking at TeX, it doesn't make sense for O'Reilly to put in effort to
> try to be "dominant," because it would be _VERY_ difficult to unseat
> A-W. The best they can do is to have second- or third-string books,
> so they have evidently decided not to even play in the TeX "market."
>
> And much the same holds true for Lisp. O'Reilly isn't in a position
> to "challenge for leadership," so it's not _too_ remarkable for them
> to choose to stay out of the game.
This line of reasoning works wonderfully ... until you get to Emacs.
I don't know how many times I've had to tell someon more than once to
avoid the O'Reilly Emacs/Elisp books, because they're out of date.
Given that their only competition in this arena is the FSF, I don't
understand why they don't update their still-in-print Emacs books.
Biep @ http://www.biep.org/
> I am inclined to accept the "irrationality" hypothesis about the
> O'Reilly ban on LISP and LaTeX.
>
> If the market for these books is (and - admittedly - is smaller than
> that of "The Idiotitic Guide to SLDJ") then you can just prioritize
> them low on the editorial pipeline and devote small resources to them.
>
> But the ban is comprehensive and absolute. There is no leeway for
> market adaptability in there. Hence I - personally - conclude that it
> is an "irrational" choice. The fact that it does not harm O'Reilly
> financially simply makes the overall management indifferent to such
> "irrationality".
Well, maybe they have a backlog of books on these subjects, and until the
few resources they do allocate have digested that backlog, they do not
accept any new submissions.
Does anybody know more than the infamous web page tells us?
--
Biep
Reply via any name whatsoever at the main domain corresponding to
http://www.biep.org
Ray Blaak
> | that is required is for people to lighten up, bigtime. That is, don't get
> | angry, upset, annoyed, etc., so easily.
>
> So do your part and don't piss people off with your selective "observations".
My observations are hardly anything that would piss anyone off. Except you,
but everything does, so that's hardly anything to worry about.
> | There are gentler ways with dealing with the clueless that are simply more
> | effective, namely, pointing out the error of their ways *without* invective
> | convulsions, and then if they don't get it, simply ignoring them or the
> | entire thread.
>
> Yeah, and I see your name trying to do this all the time, right?
Google my name and you will quite readily see the style and tone of my
posts. Yes, I do in fact do this all the time.
> | You yourself have improved dramatically in the last number of months,
> | making an obviously concerted effort to reign things in. I honestly
> | congratulate you.
>
> Fuck you. So why did you have to complain? Goddamn whining negativists.
For someone who is demonstrably so intelligent, your social skills suck big
time. A little of that intelligence applied to dealing with people would make
your communications dramatically more effective.
sv0f
<ru...@4dv.net>) wrote:
>"Perry E. Metzger" <pe...@piermont.com> writes:
>>Books on languages such as Ruby, Perl, Python, etc. all
>> sell well because lots of people use those languages for their
>> everyday work.
>
>People use Ruby? Last I looked at it, I wasn't very impressed...
Exactly my observation.
I can understand why people were excited about Java when it
came along, given the rising distaste for C++ and Microsoft.
I can understand why people found Perl a useful alternative
to a variety of UNIX mini-languages. I can understand why
people migrated to Python, given that it combines the
systematicity and modernity of real languages with the
convenience of scripted languages.
But what on earth does Ruby have going for it? People seem
to be chasing the new for new's sake, even though it appears
to offer no single significant improvement.
Erik Naggum
| My observations are hardly anything that would piss anyone off. Except you,
| but everything does, so that's hardly anything to worry about.
You just proved that your observational skills are clouded by emotion and
hence are completely worthless. Shut up and enjoy your leave of absence.
| For someone who is demonstrably so intelligent, your social skills suck big
| time. A little of that intelligence applied to dealing with people would make
| your communications dramatically more effective.
Concern yourself with yourself. If you have so much advice to offer me, how
come you continue to insist on pissing me off more? Obnoxius idiot.
Peter Keller
: | You, sir, need to walk away from computers, programming, and people and get
: | a different job in a different field where you don't even use computers or
: | talk to people because whatever computer/programming related thing you are
: | doing now is appearing to make you terribly unhappy.
: Let me know how it worked for you. Take a week, nay, /four/ weeks off, and
: get back to us with a report on your mental state. Until then, shut your hot
: air vent, you disgustingly rude little runt. You speak about yourself and
: your inability to cope with rejection because you realize that you /should/
: be rejected for the insipid non-contributions you serve us. Quit annoying
: people with your vacuous "observations" and your idiotic "advice". OK?
I think, from now on, I'm just going to read your posts instead of ever
responding to them.
Erik Naggum
| I think, from now on, I'm just going to read your posts instead of ever
| responding to them.
Naturally, this stupid trick would not have worked if you had just /done/ it.
Take a hike.
Christopher Browne
> Christopher Browne <cbbr...@acm.org> writes:
>
>> Looking at TeX, it doesn't make sense for O'Reilly to put in effort to
>> try to be "dominant," because it would be _VERY_ difficult to unseat
>> A-W. The best they can do is to have second- or third-string books,
>> so they have evidently decided not to even play in the TeX "market."
>>
>> And much the same holds true for Lisp. O'Reilly isn't in a position
>> to "challenge for leadership," so it's not _too_ remarkable for them
>> to choose to stay out of the game.
>
> This line of reasoning works wonderfully ... until you get to Emacs.
> I don't know how many times I've had to tell someon more than once to
> avoid the O'Reilly Emacs/Elisp books, because they're out of date.
> Given that their only competition in this arena is the FSF, I don't
> understand why they don't update their still-in-print Emacs books.
Politics can explain that: I don't think Tim O'Reilly likes RMS
terribly much, and they probably _aren't_ foregoing a windfall of
$150K/year out of not selling books about RMS' pet software.
I don't feel the need to expect that people "with money" will
necessarily _not_ do petty things...
--
(concatenate 'string "chris" "@cbbrowne.com")
http://cbbrowne.com/info/finances.html
"Es is nicht gasagt das es besser wird wenn es anders wirt. Wenn es
aber besser werden soll muss es anders werden. (Loosely translated:
Different is not necessarily better. But better _is_ necessarily
different.)" -- G. Ch. Lichtenberg
Craig Brozefsky
> "Perry E. Metzger" <pe...@piermont.com> writes:
>
> > What I've noticed in a lot of people in this community (and it really
> > is just one community) is a lot of arrogance.
>
> Yes, this is an acknowledged problem. There's a popular Jesse Bowman
> quote, "The problem with Lisp is it makes you so damn smug."
Do you perhaps mean Jesse Bouwman aka je...@onshored.com, and
co-author of IMHO/USQL/ODCL and some other stuff?
--
Craig Brozefsky <cr...@onshored.com> Senior Programmer
onShore Development http://www.onshore-devel.com
Free Common Lisp Software http://alpha.onshored.com/lisp-software
Thomas Stegen
> 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.
>
Hear hear!
--
Thomas Stegen.
Thomas F. Burdick
> Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw when t...@hurricane.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) would write:
> > Christopher Browne <cbbr...@acm.org> writes:
> >
> >> Looking at TeX, it doesn't make sense for O'Reilly to put in effort to
> >> try to be "dominant," because it would be _VERY_ difficult to unseat
> >> A-W. The best they can do is to have second- or third-string books,
> >> so they have evidently decided not to even play in the TeX "market."
> >>
> >> And much the same holds true for Lisp. O'Reilly isn't in a position
> >> to "challenge for leadership," so it's not _too_ remarkable for them
> >> to choose to stay out of the game.
> >
> > This line of reasoning works wonderfully ... until you get to Emacs.
> > I don't know how many times I've had to tell someon more than once to
> > avoid the O'Reilly Emacs/Elisp books, because they're out of date.
> > Given that their only competition in this arena is the FSF, I don't
> > understand why they don't update their still-in-print Emacs books.
>
> Politics can explain that: I don't think Tim O'Reilly likes RMS
> terribly much, and they probably _aren't_ foregoing a windfall of
> $150K/year out of not selling books about RMS' pet software.
Well, they could certainly focus on XEmacs and its dialect of elisp.
I do wonder how much sales they're missing out on ... I personally
have told about a dozen people so far this year *not* to buy an
O'Reilly book on Emacs, and that's only counting face-to-face
encounters. Admittedly, I'm a known Emacs user/programmer to these
people, but I'd bet there's a lot of business they're missing.
> I don't feel the need to expect that people "with money" will
> necessarily _not_ do petty things...
I'm guessing that's likely it.
Bruce Lewis
> Bruce Lewis <brl...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
> > Yes, this is an acknowledged problem. There's a popular Jesse Bowman
> > quote, "The problem with Lisp is it makes you so damn smug."
>
> Do you perhaps mean Jesse Bouwman aka je...@onshored.com, and
> co-author of IMHO/USQL/ODCL and some other stuff?
I don't actually know. I just remembered seeing the quote a lot, and
googled to find an attribution.
Perry E. Metzger
ru...@4dv.net (Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>) writes:
> "Perry E. Metzger" <pe...@piermont.com> writes:
> >
> > The business person would note that since very few people use lisp
> > they don't want to spend money on something perceived as a niche
> > market. Books on languages such as Ruby, Perl, Python, etc. all
> > sell well because lots of people use those languages for their
> > everyday work.
>
> People use Ruby? Last I looked at it, I wasn't very impressed...
People use Ruby. Hell, *I* have used Ruby. I know lots of people
adopting it -- as a pure OO language in the smalltalk tradition it has
a lot more interesting things going for it than, say, Perl. Also, it
is trivial to get a lot of work done in it quickly -- as with Perl and
other similar languages it has a lot of API bindings for things you
need to call already written for you. Ruby also has a very friendly
and active community -- they don't get flames on their lists the way
they happen around here. As a result of all this, the community is
growing way fast.
--
Perry E. Metzger pe...@piermont.com
--
"Ask not what your country can force other people to do for you..."