village idiot
scav50
moron who just doest seem to get fired no matter how he screws up. but
that's not enough for our idiot. this pest has to annoy everyone every
month by telling us how great some crap we are not using really is,
and how we should all switch. this month the crap de jour is lisp. the
moron i'm talking about read a little bit of slashdot and online
tutorials, and thinks we should use it. to my surprise, the management
actually got fascinated by the promises of "intelligent web" that they
apparently think could be smarter than the customers themselves and
somehow tell them what they want to buy (the AI bubble of the '80s all
over again) so they started looking into this and asked me to write a
report on the feasibility of using lisp for our application to deliver
this "intelligent content". (the fact is that i'm the only one who has
actual real-world lisp experience) so now, instead of doing actual
work in java and c++, because of this local moron, i have to waste my
time on this. so to all you slashdot-wielding and usenet-spamming lisp
evangelists i have to say this: before preaching something, learn the
fucking subject. before you say that lisp is easy, try actually
learning it! look at lispers with 10-20 year experience who argue
about what a three-line snippet supposed and not supposed to do, what
figging variables get bound, unbound, re-bound, shaddowed, what gets
unwound, and what doesn't. if you think destructor semantics are
obscure when combined with multiple inheritance, or that method
overloading coupled with templates attract bugs - you aint seen
nothing yet. before you pretend to be an intellectual and proclaim
that other languages can be defined on top of lisp, write a hygienic
"defmacro" replacement usable with the same syntax, but that isn't
vulnerable to variable capture and inadvertant multiple argument
evaluations, unless explicitly requested. do this without re-writing
half of the compiler. no? you can't? then stfu! even guy steele, the
author of lisp standard came to realize the crappiness of the
language, so he had to create a new one - scheme (also a pile of
shit). paul graham, the celebrated author of lisp books, couldn't help
but call lisp "awkward" in On Lisp. is this convincing enough? sorry,
i had to vent. i think i finally collected my thoughts for the
'report'.
Ashish
Espen Vestre
> so to all you slashdot-wielding and usenet-spamming lisp
> evangelists i have to say this: before preaching something, learn the
> fucking subject. before you say that lisp is easy, try actually
> learning it!
Hmmm. I think I have to adjust my troll- and irony detectors, they
freaked out on this article.
--
(espen)
Coby Beck
--
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")
"scav50" <sca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:e0a34273.03051...@posting.google.com...
Joona I Palaste
on comp.lang.java.programmer:
You used two capital letters on the third-from-last line. Are you
slipping?
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"Stronger, no. More seductive, cunning, crunchier the Dark Side is."
- Mika P. Nieminen
Ian Wild
>
> as almost every sizeable programming team, we have our own half-witted
"Doest"? Too much reading of the KJV, I'd guess.
> sorry,
> i had to vent. i think i finally collected my thoughts for the
> 'report'.
You might also want to collect a few capital letters
to use in your report. (Or maybe insist on using
a language where case isn't that important.)
T.M. Sommers
>
> You might also want to collect a few capital letters
> to use in your report. (Or maybe insist on using
> a language where case isn't that important.)
Like Lisp.
ghl
> moron who just doest seem to get fired no matter how he screws up. but
> that's not enough for our idiot. this pest has to annoy everyone every
> month by telling us how great some crap we are not using really is,
> and how we should all switch. this month the crap de jour is lisp. the
Let's assume this is for real (survey says....)
Write a report. Add some capitals. Suggest that this guy (your nemesis) is
assigned to do a pilot project using Lisp and (oh, say) Linux. Set a
reasonable time-limit of six months and suggest he be given an office
off-site where he can really concentrate on the work.
Now he's out of your hair for six months!
(BTW, that little line between the e and s of the last line is an
apostrophe. Look it up.)
--
Gary
Johan Kullstam
Forget the capital letters, I want a paragraph break!
--
Johan KULLSTAM <kulls...@attbi.com> sysengr
Paolo Amoroso
sca...@yahoo.com (scav50) wrote in message news:<e0a34273.03051...@posting.google.com>...
> and how we should all switch. this month the crap de jour is lisp. the
> moron i'm talking about read a little bit of slashdot and online
> tutorials, and thinks we should use it. to my surprise, the management
> actually got fascinated by the promises of "intelligent web" that they
> apparently think could be smarter than the customers themselves and
> somehow tell them what they want to buy (the AI bubble of the '80s all
> over again) so they started looking into this and asked me to write a
> report on the feasibility of using lisp for our application to deliver
> this "intelligent content". (the fact is that i'm the only one who has
You should actually thank your local moron. You can just write a half
page report where you mention the "AI bubble" (be sure not to forget
the AI winter). It will take a few minutes. He spared you the trouble
of doing actual research and, God forbid, use your brain.
> but call lisp "awkward" in On Lisp. is this convincing enough? sorry,
No.
Paolo
Drew McDermott
> to my surprise, the management
> actually got fascinated by the promises of "intelligent web" that they
> apparently think could be smarter than the customers themselves and
> somehow tell them what they want to buy (the AI bubble of the '80s all
> over again) so they started looking into this and asked me to write a
> report on the feasibility of using lisp for our application to deliver
> this "intelligent content".
You'll be doing your management a big favor if you tell them that the
notion is silly that writing a program in Lisp makes it more likely to
deliver "intelligent" anything. It's just a programming language, for
chrissake! Be sure to take a couple of Valium before trying to talk to
them, though.
-- Drew McDermott
Kumade Khawi
Well, like many other things in life, it all depends on your *readtable*.
Wade Humeniuk
> report on the feasibility of using lisp for our application to deliver
> this "intelligent content". (the fact is that i'm the only one who has
> actual real-world lisp experience) so now, instead of doing actual
> work in java and c++, because of this local moron, i have to waste my
> time on this. so to all you slashdot-wielding and usenet-spamming lisp
> evangelists i have to say this: before preaching something, learn the
> fucking subject. before you say that lisp is easy, try actually
Just because something takes hard work does not mean it is
not useful. Lots of things in life take hard work to learn and to
use (just ask my surgeon, a real professional).
I'm sorry to hear you think management hoisted an
impossible task (and more work) upon your head. But its the
nature of the beast. Maybe you can just go back and do the
easy work of assembling pre-existing components in Java and
C++.
Life is hard and learning is even harder.
Wade
Christian Lynbech
Ian> You might also want to collect a few capital letters
Ian> to use in your report.
I think the report will be in all uppercase letters, he has used up
all the lowercase ones.
Long live the teletype experince.
------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Christian Lynbech | christian #\@ defun #\. dk
------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Hit the philistines three times over the head with the Elisp reference manual.
- pet...@hal.com (Michael A. Petonic)
Joseph Cipale
Well.. he was ranting against lisp... ~grins... remebering my experience
with lsip... {shudder}~
--
#----------------------------------------------------------#
# Penguinix Consulting #
#----------------------------------------------------------#
# Software development, QA and testing. #
# Linux support and training. #
# "Don't fear the penguin!" #
#----------------------------------------------------------#
# Registered Linux user: #309247 http://counter.li.org #
#----------------------------------------------------------#
Mark Meyer
> ... even guy steele, the author of lisp standard came to realize
> the crappiness of the language, so he had to create a new one -
I disagree. call/cc rocks! :-)
--
Mark Meyer mme...@raytheon.com
Raytheon Voice (972)344-0830 Fax (972)344-6840
Thaddeus L Olczyk
wrote:
>In our last episode, scav50 wrote:
>> ... even guy steele, the author of lisp standard came to realize
>> the crappiness of the language, so he had to create a new one -
> > scheme (also a pile of shit). ...
>
>I disagree. call/cc rocks! :-)
call/cc is not the only difference between Lisp and Scheme.
--------------------------------------------------
Thaddeus L. Olczyk, PhD
Think twice, code once.
Kaz Kylheku
> moron who just doest seem to get fired no matter how he screws up.
Who is that one person that has always been on every programming team
you have ever been on? Who is that person who never joined a team
later than you did, and never left the team sooner than you? Answer
that question, and you have the identity of the moron.
Fred Gilham
Mark Meyer <mme...@raytheon.com> writes:
> In our last episode, scav50 wrote:
> > ... even guy steele, the author of lisp standard came to realize
> > the crappiness of the language, so he had to create a new one -
> > scheme (also a pile of shit). ...
>
> I disagree. call/cc rocks! :-)
Maybe he thinks Guy Steele used call/cc to write Scheme after he wrote
the Lisp Standard? That is, he saved a continuation back in 1974,
then got to Common Lisp, then decided it was crappy, then used the
continuation to backtrack, whereupon he wrote Scheme to fix the
problems that would later arise in Common Lisp. To cover up his
tracks, he even went on to claim that Common Lisp was descended from
Scheme.
That would make call/cc one helluva language construct.
But since he would have had to have used call/cc before he did Scheme,
I wonder what language it was implemented in?
I'm speculating that the above is true because it is far more probable
than the alternative, which is that the original poster didn't have
the faintest idea what he was talking about and got the facts wrong.
One thing that worries me. Has that continuation been garbage
collected yet, or can Steele still go back and fiddle with history?
--
Fred Gilham gil...@csl.sri.com
"If I'm going to get paged at 3 in the morning, I'd like it to at
least be my fault, and I'd also like a fighting chance of fixing the
problem." -- Tim Moore, arguing for professional open-source tools
Joe Marshall
> Mark Meyer <mme...@raytheon.com> writes:
>
> > In our last episode, scav50 wrote:
> > > ... even guy steele, the author of lisp standard came to realize
> > > the crappiness of the language, so he had to create a new one -
> > > scheme (also a pile of shit). ...
> >
> > I disagree. call/cc rocks! :-)
>
> Maybe he thinks Guy Steele used call/cc to write Scheme after he wrote
> the Lisp Standard? That is, he saved a continuation back in 1974,
> then got to Common Lisp, then decided it was crappy, then used the
> continuation to backtrack, whereupon he wrote Scheme to fix the
> problems that would later arise in Common Lisp. To cover up his
> tracks, he even went on to claim that Common Lisp was descended from
> Scheme.
>
> That would make call/cc one helluva language construct.
>
> But since he would have had to have used call/cc before he did Scheme,
> I wonder what language it was implemented in?
He didn't. He just used `universe-passing-style'.
Michael Livshin
> Fred Gilham <gil...@snapdragon.csl.sri.com> writes:
>
>> But since he would have had to have used call/cc before he did Scheme,
>> I wonder what language it was implemented in?
>
> He didn't. He just used `universe-passing-style'.
in fact, there is no need to pass anything anywhere. the Universe is
a monad.
--
All ITS machines now have hardware for a new machine instruction --
CIZ
Clear If Zero.
Please update your programs.
William D Clinger
> notion is silly that writing a program in Lisp makes it more likely to
> deliver "intelligent" anything. It's just a programming language, for
> chrissake! Be sure to take a couple of Valium before trying to talk to
> them, though.
>
> -- Drew McDermott
Programming languages are like running shoes. The best shoes in the
world aren't going to make you much faster...but I don't recall any
track and field athletes who have won an Olympic medal while wearing
cowboy boots.
OTOH...
Will
_ XL1201 _ Sebek _ Budo _ Kafka @hotmail.com Franz Kafka
> moron who just doest seem to get fired no matter how he screws up. but
> that's not enough for our idiot. this pest has to annoy everyone every
> month by telling us how great some crap we are not using really is,
> and how we should all switch. this month the crap de jour is lisp.
BTW, Is the village idiots name marc spitzer?
at least he won't use FSF/GPLed software ;)
but he'll whine to the management that he can't
Pascal Bourguignon
At least one have barefooted though.
--
__Pascal_Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault in reality.
Marc Spitzer
Well at leas you spelled my name right, cut and past is not beyond
you.
Now you realize that the above action actually hurts your credibility.
You are engaging in a personnel attack in an unrelated thread, this
generally means you admitted you lost the discussion.
you dumb fuck
marc
scav50
i can see how you could have induced this rule from your own
experience. however, you failed to realize that it may not apply to
others. why don't you go expand a macro or backtrace something? make
yourself appear useful.
_ XL1201 _ Sebek _ Budo _ Kafka @hotmail.com Franz Kafka
"Marc Spitzer" <mspi...@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:86he7xb...@bogomips.optonline.net...
> "Franz Kafka" <Symbolics _ XL1201 _ Sebek _ Budo _ Kafka @ hotmail . com>
writes:
>
> > "scav50" <sca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:e0a34273.03051...@posting.google.com...
> > > as almost every sizeable programming team, we have our own half-witted
> > > moron who just doest seem to get fired no matter how he screws up. but
> > > that's not enough for our idiot. this pest has to annoy everyone every
> > > month by telling us how great some crap we are not using really is,
> > > and how we should all switch. this month the crap de jour is lisp.
> >
> > BTW, Is the village idiots name marc spitzer?
> > at least he won't use FSF/GPLed software ;)
> > but he'll whine to the management that he can't
>
> Well at leas you spelled my name right, cut and past is not beyond
> you.
>
> Now you realize that the above action actually hurts your credibility.
What credibility? You think my name is Franz Kafka, a famous German author
:)
>
> You are engaging in a personnel attack in an unrelated thread, this
> generally means you admitted you lost the discussion.
I have lost nothing. When you exit comp.lang.lisp I will
execute (setf *erik-n-insult-mode* nil) and win :)
I only execute (setf *erik-n-insult-mode* t) when
#'losers-p or #'lame-coders-p or #'moronic-retards-ranting-p
starts returning t -- your post sets of the functions off :)
>
> you dumb fuck
See the other insults I posted in the other thread. I one about you
getting free sex /w AIDS is killer :)
>
> marc
marc's spell checker works ;) leas, past
Marc Spitzer
> "Marc Spitzer" <mspi...@optonline.net> wrote in message
> news:86he7xb...@bogomips.optonline.net...
> > "Franz Kafka" <Symbolics _ XL1201 _ Sebek _ Budo _ Kafka @ hotmail . com>
> writes:
> >
> > > "scav50" <sca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > > news:e0a34273.03051...@posting.google.com...
> > > > as almost every sizeable programming team, we have our own half-witted
> > > > moron who just doest seem to get fired no matter how he screws up. but
> > > > that's not enough for our idiot. this pest has to annoy everyone every
> > > > month by telling us how great some crap we are not using really is,
> > > > and how we should all switch. this month the crap de jour is lisp.
> > >
> > > BTW, Is the village idiots name marc spitzer?
> > > at least he won't use FSF/GPLed software ;)
> > > but he'll whine to the management that he can't
> >
> > Well at leas you spelled my name right, cut and past is not beyond
> > you.
> >
> > Now you realize that the above action actually hurts your credibility.
>
> What credibility? You think my name is Franz Kafka, a famous German author
> :)
I gave you the benifit of the doubt.
Funny my name is Marc Spitzer.
Now why do you hide what you are unless you know what you post?
marc
larry
> moron who just doest seem to get fired no matter how he screws up.
Your rants against Lisp seem like your rant against this alleged moron--
no matter how much Lisp sucks and screws programmers up, Lisp just won't
die and people continue (or even insist) on using it.
Maybe if this alleged moron never gets fired he isn't really a moron and so maybe...
scav50
> Mark Meyer <mme...@raytheon.com> writes:
>
> > In our last episode, scav50 wrote:
> > > ... even guy steele, the author of lisp standard came to realize
> > > the crappiness of the language, so he had to create a new one -
> > > scheme (also a pile of shit). ...
> >
> > I disagree. call/cc rocks! :-)
>
> Maybe he thinks Guy Steele used call/cc to write Scheme after he wrote
> the Lisp Standard? That is, he saved a continuation back in 1974,
> then got to Common Lisp, then decided it was crappy, then used the
> continuation to backtrack, whereupon he wrote Scheme to fix the
> problems that would later arise in Common Lisp. To cover up his
> tracks, he even went on to claim that Common Lisp was descended from
> Scheme.
>
> That would make call/cc one helluva language construct.
>
> But since he would have had to have used call/cc before he did Scheme,
> I wonder what language it was implemented in?
>
> I'm speculating that the above is true because it is far more probable
> than the alternative, which is that the original poster didn't have
> the faintest idea what he was talking about and got the facts wrong.
>
> One thing that worries me. Has that continuation been garbage
> collected yet, or can Steele still go back and fiddle with history?
bravo! i salute the master!
on a more serious note, you need to get your facts straight: i never
said that cltl1 was written before it was realized lisp was crap (at
least by those using it at the time). after all, the lisp they were
using back then was closely related to, but even worse than, modern
lisp. the cltl1 book simply tried to formalize existing lisp practice,
after AI acedemics refused to switch to scheme.
i'm going to answer others who replied in this message. to the guy who
suggested paragraph breaks - i will accept that as constructive
criticism. to the puke-stained twits who want capitalized sentences -
you may never understand it, but period '.' is generally enough to
denote full stop. i only use semantics-free junk in the most formal
writing.
my original intent was to let out my feelings about dimwits who run
around advocating things they don't understand, regardless of their
cause. but i'm also glad that i made my opinion on lisp known:
lisp evangelists like to dispel "rumors" about common lisp - "rumors"
that it is slow, big, unpopular, incapable of interoperating with
other systems, non-orthogonal in design and so on. if lisp is in fact
none of those things, how do you think these "rumors" got started?
don't bother answering this - i'm sure it was a conspiracy by the same
people who killed kennedy.
what would c++ users say if stroustrup said "i'm sorry, i made a big
mistake, the nonsense stops now"? the fact is, the most prominent lisp
figures eventually understood their misconceptions and turned their
backs on lisp (more or less):
+ peter norvig is into python now
+ paul graham says lisp is "awkward" in On Lisp. he also mentions
feeling like on vacation in a dentist chair, when he was working on a
lisp project (see the article about hackers and painters) - not
exactly an expression of joy.
+ guy steele - well, we just discussed him.
at least i respect these guys and their intellectual honesty. the only
people who advocate lisp now are shills for commercial implementations
and the cerebrally-challenged schmucks who believe them.
another lisp myth is that new languages can be written in it using
macros. what a nutty notion! lisp macros are nothing but c macros,
only slower, with brackets outside, and the whole lisp system
available for preprocessor abuse at compile time! again, if lisp was
the ultimate programmable programming language, why does it suck so
bad in its original "deprogrammed" state? See what i wrote about
"defmacro" earlier.
if you want to use lisp - fine, just don't shove it down the throats
of people who know better.
Edi Weitz
> + paul graham says lisp is "awkward" in On Lisp. he also mentions
> feeling like on vacation in a dentist chair, when he was working on
> a lisp project (see the article about hackers and painters) - not
> exactly an expression of joy.
You should seriously consider working on your reading and
comprehension skills and then read that article[1] again. I guess you
might be able to understand what Graham really said in a couple of
years.
> at least i respect these guys and their intellectual honesty. the
> only people who advocate lisp now are shills for commercial
> implementations and the cerebrally-challenged schmucks who believe
> them.
So, if Lisp is doomed to fail and vanish from this planet why do you
spend your valuable time fighting against it? Just chill, wait another
40 years or so and it'll probably be gone...
Edi.
_ XL1201 _ Sebek _ Budo _ Kafka @hotmail.com Franz Kafka
not languages. (Lisp is good for writing compilers.)
Your moron iff is a real moron who does not know Lisp will not
be able to write a compiler, or interpeter (four lines of code)
in Lisp.
(defun lisp-interpeter ()
(loop
(print "Lisp> ") ;; prints Lisp>
(print (eval (read))) ;; intepets Lisp
)
) ;; not the best func. just shows how lisp is used. :)
Let him use Lisp--if he is requesting it he should be using it. I'd love it
if I could use Lisp. Forget the A.I. part--it handles pointer & memory
management. Has a garbage collector, does not have strict typing.
It allows someone who knows how to use it to write code quickly--
if your a moron it won't be good code. IMHO, management should require
developers use an ANSI, IEEE, ISO language but not force them to use
C/C++/Awk/Perl/Lisp/Scheme/Forth but let them use
the lang. that they know. -- they could get a lot more work done, and
be happy about their lang. choice.
I like Lisp because I can code on the fly, without designing my program--I
can also rewrite a running program.
+ I don't get along /w pointers, but I get along with binding issues,
lexical issues--I never dumped a core because of a Lisp problem.
But, than again I know how to use the lang.
I have read David T's 'Symbolic Computation: A Gentile Guide To Common
Lisp.' Avail. for free on-line. IMHO, one of the best books to teach a newbe
Lisp even if he never programmed before.
&
Peter Novig's 'Principals of Artificial Intelligence Programming.'
both excellent books.
If your moron read's David T's book he should understand how to use Common
Lisp--even if he never programmed before.
Peter Novig's book is an excellent overview of using Lisp for A.I.,
+ how to increase the effenceny of Lisp.
all of the other resources tend to confuse rather than enlighten.
But, I am still waiting for a good Lisp that can generate Windows EXE files,
and interface /w C/C++/Java Librarys.
IMHHTGO, the dynamic typing of vars. in Lisp makes it easier to write code
because you don't have to declear vars. in Lisp functions unless you want
to.
& why should I do what I can have my language do. :)
I want to hack, not design.
P.S.
BTW, you said you were a Lisp programmer--what turned you off to Lisp? or
are you just venting because the moron does not know Lisp? David T's book
will help him learn--iff it is possible.
(defun fact (x)
(if (zerop x) ;; is x = 0
1
(* x (fact (- x 1))))) ;; x * fact(x-1)
int fact(int x) {
if (x == 0) {
return 1;
}
else {
return x * fact(x-1);
}
}
Lisp's fact an handle larger numbers, and returns huge numbers /w thousands
of digits--C/C++/Java do not.
I can do (fact 1000) in my Lisp
and get a large many thousand digit number returned.
I can do fact(1000); in my C++/Java and
get a core dump returned. ;)
Lisp is not only used for A.I.
C++/Java can be used for NuralNetworks & Genetic Alogrthms,
Lisp/Prolog is used for Expert Systems.
Espen Vestre
> other systems, non-orthogonal in design and so on. if lisp is in fact
> none of those things, how do you think these "rumors" got started?
Excersise for you:
Scientists say that the concept of 'human races' is nonsense.
So where do you think racism comes from?
> lisp macros are nothing but c macros,
O.K. You ARE a troll. Bye-bye.
--
(espen)